Biscuits, Beer, Bad Movies...

Linguists, it has been established, are universally fond of the food and the drink. Friday was the LingCircle picnic, organised apparently on a spur-of-the-moment suggestion at the last meeting. Like all linguistic events it involved a large assortment of foodstuffs and a lot of lazing around. I'm happy to say that my Anzacs went down well, since I spent so long hunting for ingredients, but there was a five-minute foray into dialectal differences involving biscuits/cookies/scones... and dumplings?

Picnicing at lunch apparently in no way detracts from the need for beer on a Friday afternoon, either, although the turnout wasn't quite as good as last week. Somehow the conversation turned to bad movies, which led to a late-night video run and a screening of Barbarella at Dave's house. Man, I'd forgotten the depth of brilliance that is Barbarella - and the amount of costume changes (every one requiring an elaborately contrived arse shot).

It was a fun evening, but alas the weekend has proven to me that I am getting old. On Saturday night I was supposed to go out as well, to two separate events. Two of the linguists were holding a joint birthday party, and another of my international friends was having drinks to farewell some friends. Alas, I never made it to any of them... Drinks were cancelled because almost everyone piked (including the girl who was hosting - at least she had the excuse of being ill!) and I wasn't willing to try to find my way alone to a strange address at night in the rain in order to make the linguist party when I was already tired and feeling the pressure of the weekend's reading list. Feel moderately bad about that, because both birthday girls seem very nice - but I'm sure they won't have missed me terribly.

I was also aware that I had agreed to go to dinner on Sunday night, and frankly, I am just not up for going out even two nights in a row, let alone three. What? I'm old, damnit!

So I spent most of the weekend doing homework, including the stupid policy exam that was required to be a Teaching Assistant. Terribly virtous of me, of course, but now it means that I'll have to find time to get groceries in the week. Baking has done me out of sugar and butter already...

Tonight I got talked in to going to a Chinese dinner hosted by some group for Asian and Pacific students, and new students got to eat for free... even free food wouldn't necessarily have done it, except a few friends who I haven't seen much of lately were going. Of course, fully half of the group piked at the last minute! (This is a worrying trend... Should I begin to take it personally?) However, I did get to chat to an Argentinian philosopher who I met on the first day, and haven't had much opportunity to catch up with since, so that was nice. The food was ok, but it made me regret not getting Yum Cha with the Ladies before I left Briz!

Have a feeling the next two weeks are going to be a bit hellish because I will have a whole new set of assignments handed out next week, plus an upcoming group oral presentation. Of a phonetics paper - woe! I mean the topic is interesting (the acoustic and perceptual bases of judgments of women and men’s sexual orientation from read speech) but all that technical stuff scares me... Too many numbers! ;-)

Also - Argh! More group work! (Different group this time, which will no doubt have its own special challenges. Already it's almost impossible to find a time when we can all meet.)

Hope all you lot are doing well! If I have neglected to reply to an email - sorry! I have all my other active emails coming through gmail at the moment, so if I don't have time to reply right away, they tend to get lost in the shuffle. I'll try to do better.

Right now... I really, really miss thick toast and coffee at Genies in the morning. Mmm. Savoury toast...