Archive for October, 2006
Halloween in Britain
Fact: Halloween originated in Ireland. I learned this in my quantum field theory class from Evan, my Irish friend and Trinity basketball teammate. He explained the that Hallows’ Eve was the last night that one could harvest crops. Unharvested crops would then be claimed by the puca, which (according to Wikipedia) are mischevious spirits. I […]
Filed under: Student Life | 3 Comments
Dorkified
I was recently reading through one of my favourite general relativity textbooks when I found an odd sticky note with the following cryptic words: 4 libram of constitution 1 black diamond 4 night dragons breath 1 lung juice cocktail 30 g. I realized that the handwriting was not mine and tried to figure out what […]
Filed under: Student Life | Closed
Real people on the phone
I finally got around to setting up my internet banking account with my bank (about a month after everybody else). It was very surprising to find myself talking to a real live person on the other end of the phone when I dialed in the number to confirm my registration. What more, the person I […]
Filed under: Just for Fun | Closed
Today there was a talk on “how to write a Part III essay.” Essays are literature reviews on a topic in mathematics that may segue into PhD topic. One essay may be written during the course of Part III to count as a three unit exam. The speaker addressed the concern that at an institution […]
Filed under: Just for Fun | 4 Comments
Animal Day: Bear
From the 2004-2005 Trinity College Cambridge Regulations and General Information for Members of the College in Statu Pupillari; Section 9, “Rooms in College and in College Hostels” (and curiously removed in the 2006-2007 version): Animals. Lord Byron kept a bear in Cambridge, but nowadays Junior Members are not permitted to keep any animals in Cambridge. […]
Filed under: Expatriate Life, Just for Fun | 2 Comments
Colin Frissell Effect
From today’s BA Dinner: Me: So I’ve gotta ask, did you find it much easier to meet girls in the US given that you have a British accent? NS: Oh yeah. […laughs…] NS: But yeah, really. A lot. I had dinner today with an undergraduate who grew up in Cambridge, went to high school in […]
Filed under: Expatriate Life, Just for Fun, Uncategorized | 2 Comments
LHC for Grad Students
If I had ten cents for every time someone told me that the dawn of the LHC era is a very special time to be a graduate student, then I would have just enough money to purchase an ice cream sandwich at Diddy Riese in Los Angeles. If, instead, I had ten pence for every […]
Filed under: Physics, Student Life | Closed
Early Thanksgiving
Unlike Halloween, Thanksgiving hasn’t really made its way over the Atlantic as an imported holiday. Apparently this makes it quite a bit of an expatriate event, one manifestation requiring the Westpoint Marshall scholars to pick up some canned pumpkin pie mix from the US Airbase here. In the meanwhile, however, it’s been pointed out that […]
Filed under: Expatriate Life, Opinion | 1 Comment
Hidden Z2 symmetry
Today was a complete deja vu day. The 11 a.m. “Symmetries and Particle Physics” course repeated (nearly verbatim) the content of the 10 a.m. GR course. The professors are different, though the material is some foundational differential geometry that the former will use to describe Lie groups and that the latter will use to formulate […]
Filed under: Student Life | Closed
I’m a Physics Groupie
As I groggily left my “Symmetries and Particle Physics” course, I noticed someone new in the Centre for Mathematical Sciences main eating/meeting room. Much to my surprise (though not to anyone else’s), there was Dr. Stephen Hawking! I wasn’t about to make myself look like a cheeky American, so I went along on my way […]
Filed under: Student Life | 2 Comments
An American Physics Student in England 