I've just finished Chinese Mandarin 1 (for beginners). We learnt about food. The teacher got very excited and told us that in winter one should eat "snake with chicken and cat". Apparently this is a delicacy. Also one should try the great soups that include "bear paw simmered for 7 days" which is "hard to find" as it is illegal. Anyway, I impressed the teacher with my knowledge of dumplings (jiao zi) and really did enjoy the lessons.
Last weekend was wonderful. Really wonderful. Sha came around and we decorated the house with Christmas decorations. We have a tree (which is still missing the pulsar that will sit on top), lots of lights and a huge amount of tinsel. We had some Christmas crackers, but they may have been damaged in the flood. errr .... we managed to flood the kitchen with bath water (don't ask how!). This caused a short circuit in the electric stove which subsequently (and impressively) produced a large number of sparks and little fires before blowing the fuses. It now doesn't work.
Leaving the receding flood waters behind I drove, with Jonathan, Rabbit and Andrew to Parkes on Monday. We all woke around 4am to help run a PULSE@Parkes session from Cardiff with students from Whitchurch school! We had a moderately relaxing day at Parkes before getting up early again to drive back to Sydney this morning. We managed the drive in just over 4.5 hours which is a record for me. Tomorrow we have astrofest and then a gravitational wave meeting on Friday. Lots to do ....
4 comments:
Have you confessed to your landlord yet? I'm amused by your report of a "really wonderful" weekend despite the fact that you managed to blow up the stove.
Do you remember when your father absent mindedly flooded the kitchen at Godmanchester, one Christmas? Ah, those precious memories.
Regarding the bath, you might like to note the equations at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buoyancy
Shabash husoor!
Testing out Archimedes principle? So someone forgot to measure the volume of displaced bathwater, otherwise engaged?
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