How foggy is it in Cambridge?

My road, which you've seen in the autumn.


Parker's Piece, a wide expanse of green just south of the town centre.








A pub on Regent Street.


Cambridge Market goes on through rain, hail and fog.


Shops on King's Parade.


I'm not sure what the BBC is doing at King's College today.


On Trumpington Road.


On Pembroke Street.


A carpark at a museum on Pembroke Street. I guess ancient sea monsters need a place to park, too.


Joan in the Matrix

It's -2°C outside

While at the shops just now, I had a brainwave. I have been deprived of ice-cream for months because we don't have a freezer in our house. I've just realised that with daily highs of no more than 3°C, I can now buy masses of ice-cream and leave the tub outside!

A perfect market

I lost my hairbrush to the roving blackhole in my bedroom. This was an emergency. I immediately left the house for Boots, a store I mentioned a few months ago. I wanted to earn some loyalty points.

With my hair forming a halo around my face, I picked out a nice black comb for about £3. Near the check-out, I spotted some Christmas wrapping paper. I pulled out a gold foil roll with a red berry pattern. For about two minutes, I stood there contemplating my choices.

"Hello, Joan." Suddenly, Owen was also standing in front of the wrapping paper display.

"I lost my hairbrush," I said by way of explanation. "So I haven't brushed my hair today."

"This hair also hasn't been brushed." Owen gestured to his short hair, which, I'd guess, would never need to be brushed. "What are you doing now?"

"I'm trying to look for wrapping paper that isn't so Christmassy. I think this is the closest I can get." I showed him the gold-and-red-berry combination, and a silver roll with white swirly patterns.

He glanced at the rolls. "Still looks pretty Christmassy to me," he said, dashing my hopes. "You won't find anything but Christmas paper here at this time of year."

I was crushed. "I do have a few Christams presents that need to be wrapped but that won't use up the whole roll. I wanted to save it for presents later on."

"Ah, I see. Very cheap of you." Before I could decide whether or not this was an insult, Owen added, "Or very sustainable."

I knew only one response to this. "I love it when economics and sustainability coincide!"

Coming of age

I can no longer be called a bad cook. On Tuesday, I hosted a dinner party all by myself (with dishwashing support from Dino).

On the menu:

1. Herbed roast chicken -- Mum gave me instructions over the phone at 6:30 AM Australian time.
   
2. Spicy tomato salsa with fried eggs -- One of my favourite dishes from mum. It was the first time I've made it and it was perfect!
   
3. Stir-fried corn and beef -- We usually use pork but beef works well too.
   
4. Moroccan lamb and chickpea -- From a book Damjan gave me just before I left for Cambridge.
   
5. Maple syrup dumplings -- Kate gave me the recipe for golden syrup dumplings about five years ago. Di bought maple syrup this term so I commandeered it for this recipe. It worked fine.

I made rice and my guests brought salad and Christmas crackers. I think I fed seven people for about £20. Bargain!

New Scientist has been reading this blog

From Internet speak in world of own, I discovered New Scientist's article Just can't get e-nough, which says that 'Google-stalking' is a 'modern malady'. If you look to the glossary on the right of this blog, you'll see that I defined 'Google-stalk' on 18 July 2004. Only last month, I referenced myself about the term. I made it up! I contributed to Culture!

Snap freeze

People here tell me that it is unusually mild in England this year. Before I arrived, I was warned that I would be very cold. However, I haven't yet pulled out my woollen jumpers, let alone my thermal leggings.

The cold snap arrived today. Cambridge has been humming under endless and continuous thick fog. I was thankful for the leather gloves as my bike cut through the biting greyness.

You know it is truly cold when you go outside to empty the compost tray, and the compost bin lid is frozen shut.

Middle Earth

I live in an old English town. There are many little stores. I walked into one and found myself surrounded by shelves stuffed with trinkets and knicknacks. I waited a minute before the shopowner came out from the back room. He looked like a hobbit, with a craggy face framed by bushy white eyebrows. His colourful tie was tucked into his front pocket. He even spoke like a hobbit. I walked out with a pair of computer speakers, which he dug out from a mysterious second storeroom.

Pathetic weakness is the mother of invention

As many will know, I'm not the sharpest tool in the kitchen. My mum winces whenever she watches me fumbling my way around the stove. I thought that I was getting better at cooking here in Cambridge but today, I returned to my clumsy self.

I had 350 g of mince left so I decided cook fettuccine bolognese. I've watched my mum do it before. It looked pretty easy, even for a kitchen klutz. To minimise the risk of disaster, I prepared and lined up all the ingredients on the bench before turning on the stove.

While the pasta simmered in one pot, I fried chopped onions and mince in a pan. "Almost done!" I thought. "Just add sauce."

I bought the jar of tomato and basil sauce just an hour ago. Placing my hand over the lid, I twisted. Ungh. Nothing happened. I took a deep breath, angled my hands further around the lid for greater leverage and twisted again. UNGH.

"Okay, Joan, don't panic. You probably just need a greater coefficient of friction."

I grabbed the red-and-white checked tea towel. Wrapping the it around the lid, I twisted again. The lid didn't budge.

"Um, um..." I could feel the old anxiety building up again. "It's a metal lid. I can run it under hot water and it'll expand more than the glass jar. It'll be easier to loosen, then."

I sat the jar under the hot water tap then tried opening it again.

"Noooooo! Why am I so weak?" I had the brains but not the brawn. In the mean time, I could almost hear the the pasta wilting, the onions burning and the mince rubberising over the heat.

"Stupid thing!" I thought grumpily. "What are you made out of?" I scanned over the ingredients.

"Hey, I have all of this stuff." I blinked a couple of times as an idea grew inside me.

I tried the jar a final time before giving up on it for real. Then, darting between my cupboard, the fridge and the communal spice collection, I pulled out a can of chopped tomatoes, my tube of tomato concentrate, the leftover half onion I had wrapped up before, dried basil, garlic powder, salt and sugar.

I threw it all into the pan and it began bubbling with satisfying vigour. Taste, add salt, sugar, more basil, more garlic, taste...

For the final touch, I chopped fresh chilli and poured it in. I tasted it. Wow! What a kick!

The meal was very tasty. And now, I don't need to buy tomato-based pasta sauces ever again!

The NIMBY monster rears its ugly head

'Not in my backyard' or 'NIMBY' is a very human attitude. I got it all the time while working as an engineer.

"We're not going to have that toxic waste dump here! Put it in the city!"

"Incinerators give you cancer! Would you want to live near one?"

Alex told me that residents of Oslo are shouting NIMBY -- for the American Embassy! I've never thought of the American Embassy as an undesirable neighbour. It makes a sort of sense; I guess the Norwegians are wary of a bomb attack.

Riding upstream

I've done a lot of riding today. I visited a friend's house in Girton, a suburb to the north of Cambridge. I had to climb a big hill to get there and fight the wind coming back into Cambridge.

I was a little disheartened when a thin old lady riding an antique of a bike with a basket in the front overtook me. Here I was, on my 15-speed mountain bike wearing an aerodynamic helmet and a backpack to announce to the world that I was a student (in the prime of my life). Back to the gym I go!

Screwdriver madness

Earlier in the month, I wrote about how lost I was without a screwdriver in the house. Last week, I borrowed a set from Brian, a coursemate of mine. Since then, I have been running around the house going nuts -- I am Joan, Home Handywoman!

I opened up and reassembled my laptop, I climbed into the shower to tighten the showerhead, I changed the angle on my bike light, I tried (and failed) to mend the cutlery drawer in the kitchen.

Today, I returned the screwdrivers. I was sad to see them go.

Talk nerdy to me!

Hehe... From The Age blog, Sam and the City, I was reading, 'Do smart women like smart men?'

I was particularly entertained by the linked article, 'Nerds Make Better Lovers'. One of the subheadings in the article is 'Nerds Have a Much Bigger Hard Drive'.

If these articles persuade you to find your own Nerd, try finding your geek match at Geek2Geek.

Photo diary

Sometimes, my camera stays zipped up in my bags for weeks. This week, I pulled it out and got back into recording my life.

It's Christmas time in Cambridge. This building is the Guildhall in the centre of town.


One of our last coursework requirements was to participate in a roleplay about the construction of an incinerator. I played Joan Wensley, the local beekeeper.


After 2.5 days of intense roleplay, we went to Browns, a bar across the road from the Engineering department.


You know it's Christmas in England because everyone is drinking mulled wine.


In fact, here is our house's version of mulled wine. My housemate, Di, cooked up a feast for us to celebrate Christmas.


She also made gingerbread cookies and chocolate chip cookies. I think I'm getting pudgey.


Last Saturday, I took the train to London.




At Christmas time, there is a temporary market at Covent Garden. Most of the things for sale are a bit trashy but Jon, Damjan, Di, Phil and I really liked the old fashioned telephones.


Christmas time in London involves lots of fairground stalls and thrill rides at Leicester Square.


There's also a merry-go-round at Covent Garden. I think it's festive. Damjan thought the tinny merry-go-round music was obnoxious.


People lock up their bikes all over town. However, this is the first time I've seen a giant unicycle parked at a pole.


Damo and I saw the Royal Ballet perform Sleeping Beauty at the Royal Opera House. Unfortunately, I kept nodding off in the Prologue. Coffee soon fixed that. And Act III definitely overstayed its welcome.



There are lots of Christmas lights all over London. It's pretty but I can't help wondering about the electricity bill.

Robin Joan

Now that I'm a poor student, I feel less guilty about taking things. Here is a list of things in my room that I have not acquired through strictly legal means.

1. A blue scarf, which was hanging on a hook in the University Centre for almost two months. One night, I was coming out of the Centre and I felt cold so I took the scarf.
   
2. A plastic 30 cm ruler. There were about three of them in the lost property box of the Engineering Department computer lab.
   
3. A fluorescent ankle strap to prevent my trousers leg from getting caught in the bicycle chain. This strap was resting on a radiator at the Engineering Department. It didn't seem to belong to anybody.
   
4. A pen, which I took home after the College pub quiz night.
   
5. An umbrella sock to keep my umbrella from dripping. I found it on the footpath.

Going nowhere

Whenever I go to the gym, I think about the waste of energy. For most of history, there were no such things as gyms because people expended energy by walking, farming, doing household chores, climbing stairs. Now, it's kind of funny thinking about all the people at the gym cycling on the spot, going nowhere. Or running a treadmill, going nowhere. Or climbing on the StairMaster, going nowhere. Or lifting weights, up and down, up and down, then putting them back exactly where they were before.

Sometimes, I think that all those machines should be hooked up to generators so that the dissipating energy could be put back into the electricity grid. Wouldn't it be great if the roomful of people could power a laundromat? We could arrive at the gym, load up the washing machine and ride our way to clean clothes.

Those kicks are fast as lightning

When I got to England, I bought a new laptop. I bought a Toshiba because I like the brand. The keyboards are nice.

However, I paid a premium for the brand and to partly offset this, I only got 256 MB of RAM. I thought this would be okay. It wasn't. You can no longer survive on 256 MB. It took me about 40 seconds to rotate a photo.

So I bit the bullet and bought 1 GB of RAM from eBay. I love eBay. My Strategy lecturer says that eBay's strategy is marketing against non-consumption.

I installed the RAM today and the laptop runs like a dream.

Damsel in distress

Late this afternoon, I went to the grocery store to buy meat for tonight's meal. I was halfway through my shopping when an announcement came over the loudspeaker.

"It is 5 o'clock. This store is now closed. Please make your way to the checkout."

Darn! I forgot about the stupid Sunday trading laws.

So I joined the sea of people lining up at the checkout. Suddenly, I spotted Jon, who I know from our scholarship group.

"Jon!" I cried.

"Joan! Wow. You wouldn't believe who else I saw, too..."

I looked past him. "It's Krish!"

"And there's Anne!" Jon pointed to the other side of the checkouts. Krish and Anne are Scholars too.

"Hey, guys," Krish said, lining up behind Jon. "Man, I haven't seen you in a month."

"I am so glad this week is over," I agreed. I put my groceries on the converyor belt and did a quick calculation in my head. I didn't have much but the lamb was going to be expensive. I pulled out my wallet to get my bank card.

No bank card.

I must have left it on my desk when I used it this morning to buy a bus ticket.

There was only a £10 note in the wallet. There was also a long line of last-minute shoppers waiting to go through. What to do?

I turned around and put on my damsel-in-distress face. "Jon, can I borrow some money?"

"Joan, you're cleaning me out," he laughed. "How much?"

"Ten pounds?"

"There you go."

Putting my foot in it again

I caught the eye of Dr William, the white-haired, tweed-suited husband of our college president. So we started a conversation. I learned a bit about vegetable gardening and he asked about my course. Then it was my turn to start a topic.

"What is your area of expertise, Dr William? What did you do your PhD in?" I asked.

"It's a bit of history -- post World War Two Indonesia, in fact."

I perked up. I knew that his wife was a historian. Perhaps that's how they met. "Are you a historian?" Then, as my thoughts ran ahead, I said, "Oh! Was it history or current affairs?"

How do you make gold soup?

I've had my nose to the grindstone for two weeks. A lot of project deadlines have been met. I'm pleased.

I did take time out from work to go attend the College Christmas formal dinner. The dining hall was decorated with trees and lights. Besides the usual candles, the tables were strewn with exciting things: shiny hats, masks, party poppers, party blowers and, most exciting of all, Christmas crackers.

Being Australian, I intuitively called them bon-bons. I had never pulled one before. Apparently, each cracker has a paper crown, a small toy and a joke. Di was most excited about the crown. I loved the jokes.

Di and I pulled my cracker and it made a satisfying pop. I unwrapped the orange crown and put it on my head. I spun the red plastic top across the table. Then, I read the joke out aloud.

"How do you make gold soup?" I said.

Di and Erin furrowed their eyebrows, then shrugged.

"By putting nine carrots in it."

They groaned and laughed.

I was confused. "But that would make it orange...?"

They thought that was even funnier.

On the political spectrum

It's election time in Victoria. I've registered for a postal vote. I felt like I was out of the election loop so today, I visited The Age to see what was going on. When the hell did T3 get sold? There was a G20 Summit in Melbourne? Another series of Australian Idol?

Brad, a fellow Aussie at my college, sent me this link -- Australian Politics Test. I'd be interested in your results, if you're comfortable sharing.

Here are mine: joanium's results

As I expected, really, although I'm surprised they picked it so accurately.

Milk Mondays

We get our milk delivered to our doorstep early on Monday mornings. Last week was our first week of deliveries. We had been hoping that the four pints would show up in ye olde glass pint bottles, and that we could put the glass out the next week for reuse by the milkperson.

We were slightly disappointed, though, when the milk arrived in the normal plastic bottles, quite similar to the milk we would by from Sainsbury's. Nevertheless, it is quite convenient to have milk delivered and it is a good way to get rid of change.

Here is £4.22 for the 10 pints (5.7 L) that we want delivered tomorrow.

We leave this on the doorstep and hope that the milkperson gets to it before a Cambridge miscreant does.

It's for a good cause

We were looking for a place to eat dinner and walked into a nice looking Spanish tapas restaurant.

"What's with the Britney Spears outfits?" Jon exclaimed. All the waitresses were wearing white shirts, short skirts and pigtails.

"It's for the BBC Save the Children fundraiser tonight," our waitress explained. "We're dressed for a 'school' theme."

"I guess Britney was going for the schoolgirl theme too," I said.

While we were looking at the menu, our waitress came around with a book of raffle tickets.

"Can I interest you in the raffle? The proceeds go to the fundraiser and the prizes are all from local businesses. It's £2 per strip and will be drawn at 9 PM."

"Sure," I said.

"I never win anything in raffles," Jon commented.

"Well, I don't expect to win. I think of it as a donation, you know, a sunk cost," I replied. Britney gave me a strip of six orange tickets, numbers 171 to 176.

Dinner was nice. A celebrity chef cooked a giant seafood paella in a pan of about one metre diameter. We donated £5 each to eat half-servings of it.

Just as we were paying the bill, they announced the raffle draw. We stuck around as the emcee call out number after number. We didn't really listen, although every now and then, I would be distracted from our conversation enough to comment, "Oh, I need a haircut!" when a hairdressing package was raffled off, or "I don't need that," when the carwash was awarded.

And suddenly, I heard, "Joan? Is Joan here?"

I stood up slowly. "Yes," I called uncertainly. Britney, who was standing next to the emcee, pointed up to where our table was. I wondered what I had won.

I walked down the steps and emcee handed me a large bottle of golden liquid. "Congratulations! You've won a bottle of whisky from CamTax."

"That's amazing!" Jon marvelled when I showed him my prize.

"I don't really know what to do with it," I admitted. I am definitely the person least likely to want a bottle of hard spirits.

Suffice to say, I was very popular with my housemates when I got home that night.

To Google (v.)

This is really interesting -- Do you "Google?"

Google fears falling into the trap of the term 'Google' moving into generic use, such that it can no longer be used as a trademark. Here is an excerpt.

Usage: 'Google' as noun referring to, well, us.
Example: "I just love Google, they're soooo cute and cuddly and adorable and awesome!"
Our lawyers say: Good. Very, very good. There's no question here that you're referring to Google Inc. as a company. Use it widely, and hey, tell a friend.

Usage: 'Google' as verb referring to searching for information on, um, Google.
Example: "I googled him on the well-known website Google.com and he seems pretty interesting."
Our lawyers say: Well, we're happy at least that it's clear you mean searching on Google.com. As our friends at Merriam-Webster note, to "Google" means "to use the Google search engine to find information about (as a person) on the World Wide Web."

Usage: 'Google' as verb referring to searching for information via any conduit other than Google.
Example: "I googled him on Yahoo and he seems pretty interesting."
Our lawyers say: Bad. Very, very bad. You can only "Google" on the Google search engine. If you absolutely must use one of our competitors, please feel free to "search" on Yahoo or any other search engine.

NIMTOO

You've heard of NIMBY -- Not In My Back Yard.

Last week, I was introduced to NIMTOO -- Not In My Term Of Office.

Losing it

Di and I walked into the College Dining Hall and I reached into my pocket for my University Card. It wasn't there. I checked the other pocket.

"Where's my card? I had it in my hand!" I vividly remembered taking the card out of my wallet. "Did I drop it?"

"No," Di assured me. "There's no way you could have dropped it on the way. Don't worry, it'll be sitting on your desk at home. I'll pay for you tonight."

I knew she was probably right. I'm very absent-minded. I could have easily taken the card out and put it down straight away without realising it. But I could have sworn I had been holding my card...

We finished dinner and started walking back towards our house, which is a few minutes off-campus. Di was saying something but I wasn't fully concentrating because I was scanning the footpath for a flash of white plastic. Luckily or unluckily, I didn't see anything.

A taxi was waiting for Di at our front door when we arrived.

"See you later!" she said, as she hopped in.

I hurried upstairs to search my room. My eyes darted to all the obvious places. No card. I rummaged through my coats and the papers on my desk. Oh no. Please, no. I had already lost my watch this week.

I was miserable. Di had been wrong. I was such an idiot.

But the misery only lasted three minutes because I did find my card! Do you know where it was?

It was in the back pocket of the jeans I was wearing!

A nail file for a screwdriver

One of the first things they made us do was attend three safety briefings. Working in the Cambridge University Engineering Department is a hazardous pasttime, what, with all the cutting surfaces and acid lying around. But apparently, the most dangerous thing we will be doing is working with a DSE or VDU -- Display Screen Equipment or Video Display Unit. That is, a computer.

"Look at this," Mr Joseph, the safety officer, said solemnly. "This is severe spinal damage at zero miles per hour."

"Do you believe me?" he asked.

I did believe, indeed. I was so frightened that I bought a keyboard and mouse and propped my laptop up on a ream of paper so that I could get the recommended neck angle.

After working at my computer for less than an hour, my shoulders started hurting. I went back to the safety pamphlet and was able to diagnose the problem: my chair was too short (or I was too short for my table, one or the other). No, no, no, this would not do. I did not want severe spinal damage at zero miles per hour.

The next day, I visited our College's Domestic Bursar.

"Excuse me, hello," I said. "How would I go about getting a computer chair? You see, I'm quite short and it hurts to work at my desk for too long."

The Bursar seemed quite taken aback. She looked uncomfortable as she explained that the college could not provide me a computer chair because then it would have to give one to every student.

I remembered what Mr Joseph had said about England's new health and safety legislation. "Don't you have an obligation to provide me with a proper chair?"

The Bursar assured me that the legislation only applied to College staff, and not students.

There was nothing left for me to do but to buy my own chair. I found one on sale at Ryman for £14.99.

When I got home, I assembled most of it before realising that I needed a screwdriver. I don't have a screwdriver. It's one of those things that I've been hoping I could live without for a year. I kind of needed one when I was installing my bike lights earlier on, when the cupboard door fell off its hinge and when the shower head got too loose and couldn't stay up.

Something tells me I will eventually have to buy a screwdriver.

Anyway, that was something to deal with tomorrow. In the mean time, I was so keen to finish the chair puzzle that I screwed it together as best I could with what I had at my immediately disposal. And all I had was a nail file.

By the time I was done, the chair looked complete and solid but there was no way I was going to sit on it. It was being held together by little more than willpower.

The delicately balanced chair sat in the corner of my room for a day or two before I found a friend with a screwdriver. Just as I was going to leave the house to pick it up from my friend's house, the College computer technician arrived to fix one of my housemate's network connection. Phil the computer tech kindly lended me a Phillips head screwdriver and I was finally able to finish assembling the chair.

And now I am sitting here in my ergonomically perfect workstation doing lots of non-work.

Internationally roaming while half asleep

I have two phones: one has my SIM card from Australia and one has my English SIM. I used to keep both of these on because I thought people back home might want to send me a message.

One morning, at 3 AM, I was jolted out of sleep by my mobile ring. I fumbled around my bedside table until I found the vibrating, flashing, squalling thing.

"Hello," I said blearily.

The lady on the phone said something.

"Huh?"

She repeated it. "This is Marion from the optometrist. I wanted to let you know that you can pick up your glasses now."

"Wha?" I had no idea what she was talking about.

"This is Marion from the optometrist on High Street Road."

In my daze, I recognised the name of a street back home in Melbourne. I started getting annoyed. "Do you know you've reached a number in England? England overseas?"

"Can I speak to Jason?" Marion asked.

Jason is my brother. "Oh, um... let me give you his mobile number... It's..." I recited the first seven numbers, then stopped. I had forgotten my brother's phone number. I guessed the last three numbers. "I think that's it. Yeah." The numbers didn't sound quite right but it was the best I could do at three in the morning.

Marion seemed to realise that this was the most she would get out of me so she said thank you and hung up.

I took the phone away from my ear and looked at it. Only now did I realise I had my Australian phone in my hand. I remembered that the phone number used to belong to my dad, who must have registered the number with the optometrist. No wonder Marion was confused.

I turned the phone off and went back to bed. I haven't turned it on for a month now.

I pressed the button

It was night time. I was sitting in the kitchen working on my new laptop. Di and Alex eventually came in and we started chatting.

We were having a good time and at some point, I pulled up my music player, cranked up the volume and we were singing the Elephant Love Medley from Moulin Rouge

"Love lifts us up where we belong!" we bellowed. "Where the eagles fly! On a mountain high!"

With ten seconds to the end of the song, the music got stuck. The laptop sat there, blaring out one loud and terrible note.

"Aargh!" We blocked our ears. "Turn it off!"

I tried to exit the program. Click, click, click. The exit cross didn't work.

Control, Alt, Delete. Nothing popped up.

"Try the external volume control! There must be a mute button!"

I found it eventually and pressed the keys but the screeching wouldn't stop.

"Turn it off! Press the power button!"

I held the power button for five seconds and finally, the blaring stopped.

I waited a couple of seconds before I pressed the power button again. The computer woke up and scrolled through the set-up. It got to the screen that told me that Windows hadn't shut down properly and I should probably try safe mode.

Well, I tried safe mode, and I tried 'Previous settings known to work', and I tried 'Start Windows normally'. With every option, the computer paused then flashed me the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) for half a second before it reset. I didn't even have time to see what the messages were. Something about 'unmountable partition'.

The computer was stuck in a reset loop.

Alex forced the computer off. "Let it rest," he said, hopefully. "Sometimes computers just need to rest."

I looked at him and Di, stricken. I had a month's work on the computer and all my photos since arriving.

"I'll wash the dishes," I mumbled. "Washing dishes will make me feel better."

I put on the yellow gloves and started scrubbing at the charred rice stuck in the rice pot. I moved onto the saucepan, working at the egg and tomato residue. Behind me, I heard Alex boot up the computer again. I kept scrubbing and scrubbing, all the while, listening to the whirr of my laptop. I turned around to look at him when the whir stopped.

"Nothing?"

He shook his head sadly. "Do you have a recovery CD? If it's just a problem with the hard drive, we can start it up again. But... I think it will format your computer."

I bit my lip and was silent for a minute.

Di said, "You can try and rescue the hard disk with the computer service tomorrow. Or wait until morning. Maybe it needs more time."

I looked down at my feet. Di and Alex looked on in sympathetic silence.

"It's really just my photos," I said slowly. "I had some work on it but nothing that I can't recreate in a day. But my photos... There are copies on the internet but they're small."

I wrung my hands and thought about all the time I had spent on setting up the computer and all the work I needed to do. I really didn't have time to get my computer fixed.

"I'll get my recovery CD," I decided. "I just want to know that it'll be all right."

I got the CD and handed it to Alex. I sat down next to him as he loaded it up.

WARNING: Your hard disk will be completely erased. Do you really want to continue?

It almost made me cry. Or maybe it was laugh.

"Are you sure?" Alex asked.

"Yes. Do it. Press OK."

"I'm not pressing it! You have to, Joan."

I gritted my teeth, reached over and pressed the button.

Guy Fawkes

Guy Fawkes Day in Cambridge is a big party. There were fireworks, a fun fair, toffee apples and cotton candy. I went on a ride. It was unexpectedly exhilarating.

We watched the fireworks from the college boathouses. There were signs warning people to only watch the fireworks from the Midsummer Commons (a big field) or from inside the boathouses. We joined the hundreds of people ignoring the safety warnings. I did get rained on with debris. The danger added to the thrill.

Owen, a coursemate, said, "England is the only country I know that celebrates the failure of a revolution. It's like, every year, the Government sponsors these fireworks and a huge bonfire to burn the effigy of Guy Fawkes so that our leaders can remind people, 'This is what will happen to you if you try to revolt!' "

The Secret Life of Alcoholics*

"What are we going to get for Alex's birthday?" Di asked. Alex is one of our housemates.

"I was thinking of getting him two boxes of Stella Artois. Do you remember how we were at Sainsbury's that first week and how wistfully he looked at those boxes? We couldn't carry them home last time."

"That's a great idea!" Di agreed. "Let's go tomorrow afternoon."

The next day, we left the house at 4 PM and rode 15 minutes down the road to the big supermarket. We found the beer easily. The special price for two boxes of 20 bottles was still available.

We took the boxes through the checkout and opened our backpacks to put them in.

"Uh oh." I tried to rearrange the box to fit into my 30 L backpack but it was just too wide.

"It'll fit in my backpack, I think," said Di. She unzipped hers for the other box. Our hearts sank as it quickly became obvious it wouldn't fit. "Maybe it'll fit in my bike basket..."

We wheeled the boxes outside to the bike parking lot. Di picked up the box and carefully placed it into her basket. "I hope it doesn't break the basket," she murmured.

It didn't fit.

"What are we going to do?"

We looked at each other and had the same idea at the same time. "We'll have to take the bottles out and carry them," Di said.

"I think we should put them in our backpacks, not in the basket," I cautioned. "I reckon there'd be some law against riding a pushbike with 20 bottles of beer in the basket..."

We spent the next five minutes reloading the bottles into our backpacks. Then, with 10 kg of beer and glass on our backs, we gingerly hopped onto our bikes, turned on our lights (it was getting dark) and rode onto the street.

I laughed all the way, even as I struggled up the one hill in Cambridge. My bag tinkled with every pedalling motion. Rider after rider overtook the two of us. We did make it home without an accident.




*Don't worry, mum, I'm joking.

Before walking

We were walking through the glasshouses at the Cambridge Botanic Garden when I spotted a sign that made me laugh. It said, "No perambulators beyond this point."

"Look at that! Isn't that funny? It says 'perambulator'!" I laughed.

"What's a perambulator?" asked Jon, puzzled. Jon is from Calgary in Canada.

"A pram."

"What's a pram?"

That stumped me. "Erm. It's a chair with wheels. You push babies on it."

"Oh, a stroller!" Jon clarified.

This exchange, too, was funny to me so I recounted it to Di when I got home.

"In Australia, we say 'pram'," I explained to Di. "If you said 'stroller', we'd understand but I think 'pram' comes more naturally."

"What do the English call it?" Di asked.

"It said 'perambulator'!"

Di started laughing. She laughed a lot. Yeah, I thought it was funny too, but not as funny as Di seemed to find it.

"That makes so much sense!" she said. "It's like 'before walking'."

I was confused for a second, then I got it. "No, no! Not pre-ambulator! Per-ambulator!"

A tropical flower in the glasshouse.

The reason we went to the Botanic Gardens was that it was Apple Day.

I ate my very first toffee apple. My next task is to try a caramel apple.

Taking a punt

Perhaps it was the last warm, sunny day for the year. Something in the air told us that we needed to make the most of this Sunday in Cambridge. Dianne and I decided to take Jana punting before she flew out to Iceland.

We arrived at the Scudamore's ticket box. "How much does it cost to hire a punt?" we asked.

"£16 an hour," said the lady. She looked weary. Damn these tourists, she was probably thinking. Seeing how poor we looked, she asked, "Are you students? Which college? Okay, that's £14 an hour. You'll need a £70 deposit or we can take your credit card."

We looked at each other. Di shrugged and took out her credit card. While the lady was swiping it, I picked up the punting guide on the counter and flipped through it. It was full of commentary on the sights we would see as we punted down the Cam.

"Hey!" A guy leapt towards the ticket office. "I've only got five people on my punt and I'm about to push off."

"Only five?" said the ticket lady. "There were 15 just now!"

"Yeah, well, I've only got five."

"How much for a guided punt?" I inserted quickly.

"Are you students? £10 each."

"Give us a discount and we're on the boat," I replied.

He considered it briefly. "£9, then."

Not much of a cut, but hey, that's AUD2.50. "Okay! Deal."

Punts are flat-bottomed boats. Punting is a popular activity at both Oxford and Cambridge.

Jana took this photo. I put on my Asian tourist pose.

There was a lot of river traffic on Sunday.

The amateur punters kept causing traffic chaos, like this river jam. Our guide was a seasoned professional -- David from Pembroke College. Mostly, we sailed blithely passed the traffic tangles. We asked David how difficult punting was. He said, "I would put it on par with ice-skating."

This is the Bridge of Sighs (check out the weblink!). It is one of three in the world, the other two being at Oxford and the original one in Venice. David told us the the Venetian one was called the Bridge of Sighs because it linked the prison to the court house. Prisoners would sigh as they crossed the bridge towards their fate.

On the other hand, students at St John's Cambridge would sigh as they crossed because the bridge linked their college rooms to the examination halls.

Unlike at Venice and Cambridge, the Bridge of Sighs at Oxford crosses a road rather than a river. David told us that as the students at Oxford crossed over the noisy traffice, they would sigh and wish they went to Cambridge instead.

Why study when you can fish?

Postscript
Oh, and remember the punting guide I mentioned? I tucked it into my bag. When I got home, I gave it to Jana, saying, "Here, Jana, you can have this as a souvenir of your Cambridge punting experience."

"Thanks, Joan," she said. "Hey, did you pay for this? I didn't see you do it."

"Pay? No. Was I meant to?"

"I think so." Jana flipped the booklet over and there, at the back, it said '£2.50'.

Whoops!