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.