I’ve finally gotten around to sending my blog address along to Hampshire’s GEO office, so I suppose this is the part where I stop bemoaning my various kitchen-implement and weather related issues and start pretending to be useful.

                A student life tidbit, then.  Events for students are organized on a few different scales.  The University hosts some, as do societies (and those organized by societies are not necessarily restricted to members, though things like wine tastings and lectures may have a small entry fee).  Events come in all sorts – academic lectures, charity efforts, casual sports, touristy trips, and so on.  Departments bring in guest speakers, Residence Life puts on a few different initiatives to keep students productive and entertained, and some of the residence areas have their own specific shindigs.  The Warrender Park group, for example, is comprised of three roads in Marchmont: Warrender Park Road, Terrace, and Crescent.  We have a facebook group to keep in touch and ask questions, and our RAs and directors get us together for things like pub outings, urban capture the flag, holiday parties, five-a-side football, and so on.  Some flats have signed up to host other flats for little competitive dinner parties, ala  “Come Dine With Me.”  Recently they got us a good deal on tickets to the New Zealand v. Scotland rugby match.  No one I know well is going, but that certainly didn’t stop me from signing up to go along.  If I shirked from everything I thought I was going to have to do by myself, I would have lived a very different life from the one I have.  All of this generally means that you can be as busy and involved as you’d like to be, but you’re also quite free to keep to yourself and find your own way around.  I’m happy enough to do my own thing, but it’s nice to have the option of dipping into a larger group of people should the desire present itself.

           Myself, I’m rather partial to the wine and cheese lectures hosted by Res Life.  I’m a curious person, and an epicurean of a sort, so it’s a nice two for one.  The subjects are interesting, and while the wine isn’t exactly top-shelf, I’m not one to quibble over free drinks, and the soft cheese and crackers are rather nice.  Last week I went to one given by Dr. Gordon Findlater, the University’s Director of Anatomy, on the time and conditions of medical schools in Edinburgh at the time of Burke & Hare.  The whole talk really underlined how much fascinating history is just underfoot here in Edinburgh.  It was interesting and relatively informal, it cost nothing, and I even got to walk away at the end of the night with one of the leftover bottles of cheap white.  Not bad, for a Tuesday night.  It was also a pleasant little walk – about a mile either way – from my apartment to the venue where it was held.  Pollock Halls, a set of buildings owned by the University, is made up of residences and other facilities, like event spaces and fitness centers and whatnot, so it’s good that I had a reason to figure out where it is.  I believe that the residences there are catered and primarily for first-years, so I don’t know anyone in my classes that actually lives there, but I’m sure I’ll find myself there again sometime.  Catered, by the way, is how the University describes housing that contains no or limited kitchen facilities, and where students are expected to eat at a dining hall.  I served my time as a dining hall goer in first year, and I have no desire to repeat the experience.

            As fond as I am of walking through this city, my keenness wanes when I contemplate walking back to my flat, and then back to George Square in between classes.  It’s only about a fifteen-minute walk either way, but the turnaround is too short for the trip to a cup of tea and an afternoon snack to be appealing.  I’m too frugal to make a habit of spending money on coffee just to spend the time, and so for the first few weeks I would circumvent the cue spilling out of the library café door to find an empty table where I could fiddle with my notes and tell myself I was being productive.  I could, I suppose, bring my laptop with me and work on course-related readings, and so I do when deadlines are pressing.  It’s not as though they don’t give me enough to keep me busy.  It’s a heavy little bugger though, to drag along for just forty minutes of reading.  There are plenty of computers in the library complex, but I am generally idling there in the early afternoon, when most study spaces are filled to max capacity.  All of this is really an elaborate excuse for my new favorite spot to waste time.

            It started when an essay I was reading on the technicalities of visual reference and biological mechanisms for the identification of animation, and it referenced a scene in the Epic of Gilgamesh.   I spent the rest of the hour humming “Palaces of Montezuma*,” and when I finished my reading a little early, I ducked into the library on a whim to see if I could find a copy of the Babylonian epic.  I’ve never read it before, you see, and despite the previous claims on my time, something told me that I ought to.  I found where the book was supposed to be, on the third level of the library and a shelf up from some tomes on the history of Hebrew names, but the first volume had been taken out.  Once I found myself in the ancient history section, however, I couldn’t simply walk away.  My inner Daniel Jackson** took hold of the situation, and I pulled out several books on the materials used by the Assyrians in religious practice.  Nearly all of the nooks on that floor are reserved spaces, but I didn’t want to roam far, as I was short on time.  Several rows over, I found a sort of cubby in the wall, where I could sit on the floor and read while not being underfoot for anyone hoping to get past.  When I got settled, I realized that I was sitting, staring at a rack of nothing but excerpts, analyses, and translations of Homer.  I’ve been returning to the third floor and that same cubby every since.

          As I’ve said, there’s plenty of reading I could be doing for my classes, but this is different.  There is something so enthusing about learning something that you didn’t anticipate.  It reminds me of my childhood, when I’d aimlessly dig through our World book encyclopedias, roaming from entry to entry, finding things that I would have never thought to go looking for.  I love that I have the opportunity to go to university, and my classes are thoroughly interesting, but there is something special about clandestine knowledge – about picking up a book on Assyrian tablet translations, or the history of hieroglyphs, or Ancient Semitic attitudes towards the ocean.  Ancient languages and history are certainly not my only interests, but like I say, I’ve been camping in the classics section as of late.  I’m a horrible procrastinator, always have been, and I can think of few more enjoyable and enriching ways to waste my time.  Learn how to read Coptic?  I don't see why not.

 *

**For those of you that weren’t watching sci-fi in the early 2000’s, Daniel Jackson was the archeologist/ linguist in the elite intergalactic exploration team on Stargate: SG-1.  He starts out as a typical headstrong bleeding-heart academic, and gets consistently more badass as the series progresses.  

For all that it is generally overcast here, we do get the most splendid sun-showers.  You'll be walking down the path under a sunny sky, and you'll feel the first flecks of rain, so faint at first the you imagine it's probably last night's weather being gusted off the leaves.  Soon enough it's picking up into an actual shower, from a sky full of sun.  I can walk all the way home like that, the fall coming harder and harder, until the the clouds catch up.  The rain here is never torrential, but because the cover is more or less omnipresent, there's no telling when it will start up again.  I have a deep abiding affection for rain, and do not mind in the least.

On the subject of small pleasures, I've found vegetables.  The little chain grocery markets all offer a rather pitiable selection of produce, and while there are plenty of middle eastern shops in the squares beyond the University, I wasn't previously aware of anything closer to the flat.  Luckily, I dedicated part of the weekend to exploring a little more thoroughly my side of the Meadows, and found a fruit and veg market just half a block down from the Scotmid.  As a result, the dinner for this week is crepes piled with sharp cheddar and sauteed peppers, zucchini, and mushrooms, with a few daubs of thai green curry sauce.  International, make-it-up-as-you-go-along cuisine is the only way to live.  Anyone that thinks that being a penniless university student means that you have to live off pot noodle is lazy, an idiot, an individual with time management issues, or some combination of the three.

Also, either the the recipe that Twinings uses for English Breakfast in America is different from what they sell here, or that yogurt that I had earlier has gone off to a hallucination-inducing degree, because the cup of tea that I'm drinking while I type this is almost suspiciously good.