Anna was telling me about the clever Tiffany’s campaign, which singlehandedly spread the idea that the right amount to spend on a diamond engagement ring was three month’s of the man’s income.

‘They even put a calculator on their website so that the man could work out how much he should spend,’ she said. ‘Although, any man who needs that calculator probably isn’t worth it…’

‘I read somewhere that the original reason for the diamond engagement ring was because once people got engaged, well, it was kind of like they could start sleeping together,’ I said.

Anna looked puzzled. ‘Was it to prove that they really were engaged?’

‘No. It was in case the woman got pregnant and then got dumped. She would at least still get some money to survive on by selling the ring.’

Anna considered this briefly. ‘So the ring’s like a deposit?’

I started laughing. ‘Exactly!’

The Mosuo are an ethnic group living in the province of Yunan near Tibet. My parents visited them on their last trip to China.

Mum described the matriarchal society. ‘The women are the bosses. They run the village, the families and businesses. When a Mosuo woman sees a man she likes, she can point to him and say, ‘Come here’ and they will go to her bedroom. To show that there she has a man in her room, the man’s hat is hung on a hook near the door. When the woman is tired of him, she can tell him to leave. He takes his hat with him and the hook hook by the door is empty again.’

I listened, astonished. ‘Mum, I don’t know if many men would mind that…’

Mum shrugged. ‘Well, if the woman gets pregnant, it is the responsibility of her brother to raise the child. That is the burden of the men, to look after the children of their sisters.’

You can read more about the Mosuo here.

On the weekend, I spent 6.5 hours cutting open dozens of cardboard boxes, pulling out eight sets of computer towers, monitors, keyboard, mouses, software, assembling them, crawling under computer desks to wire them up, plug them in, untangle them, rewire, uninstalling trial software, installing indispensable freeware, installing Microsoft office, setting up a wireless network, printer network, riding to electronics stores to buy more power boards, setting up administrator and user accounts, setting defaults for printing, security, software updates, registering software, flattening cardboard boxes, piling them into a mountain of tired cardboard.

Today I posted a box of software back to the computer store, was on the phone with tech support to troubleshoot a dead DVD-RW drive on one of the new computers (turned out the computer assembler didn’t plug the power into the drive), picked up two new toner cartridges and installed them, posted instructions for accessing the wireless network on the wall, updated security settings on the computers, and helped someone with the wireless settings on their laptop.

Exhaustion.

In the past week, I have lost my appetite. I eat breakfast and lunch as normal. By the time dinner comes around, I prod my stomach and am still unhungry. I’ve skipped dinner about four times in the past week.

If you’re not hungry, is it better to eat something as scheduled or not eat?

I haven’t changed my level of activity. I ran around doing the computer stuff on Saturday, biked four miles and walked the same on Sunday, ran around carrying boxes today.

Besides puzzlement about my lack of appetite, I’m worried about all the food in the fridge. I bought enough groceries to feed normal Joan appetite. Now there’s too much food. Lack of eating led to three of my potatoes turning green and white and fluffy.

I ended up cooking a big pot of vegetable curry to stop any further deterioration. That was on Thursday last week. I’m not sure how much longer I can keep the curry.

I wasn’t hungry today but I ate dinner anyway. I hate wasting food.

I’ve decided not to buy any food this week and live on the dried foods in my cupboard, plus 10 eggs. I might buy some milk and a bit of fruit too.

Maybe I’ve been eating too much all my life. For each meal, I would typically eat one or two sandwiches worth of food mass (I rarely eat sandwiches but you get an idea of the serving size). It will be hard to change my concept of ‘meal’ to something smaller.

I haven’t been productive at all for the past three weeks. It bothers me. Mostly, it’s my own fault. I get tired and instead of working through it or walking it off, I sleep or read or go on the internet. Like now.

The pronunciation of names in UK English is messed up. ‘Magdalene’ is pronounced ‘Maudlin’. ‘Edinburgh’ is pronounced ‘Edinbra’. You can count on the ‘w’ being superfluous: ‘Norwich’ is ‘Norrich’, ‘Berwick’ is ‘Berrick’, ‘Warwick’ is ‘Warrick’, ‘Bromwich’ is ‘Bromich’.

Interestingly, ‘Sandwich’ is not ‘Sandich’.

The thing that drives me nuts is the ‘ces’ syllable, which is completely absent in speech.

Gloucester = Gloster
Leicester = Lester
Worcester = Wooster

I was complaining about this to Owen. Owen was saying, ‘I was in this town near Oxford, it had a ridiculous name…’

‘Oh! I KNOW! Bister!’ I jumped in, naming the town spelt ‘Bicester’. ‘Look, I can handle Gloster and Lester and even Wooster. But Bister, that’s just perverse!’

‘It’s better than Toaster,’ Owen said calmly.

‘Toaster?’

‘Yes, there’s another town called Toaster — T O W C E S T E R.’

Which Hogwarts house will you be sorted into?

I am not a Harry Potter fan but I do like the idea of sorting people by personality. If it’s not MBTI, then it’s Hogwarts houses and sorting hats. I looked up Hogwarts houses on Wikipedia and found the following descriptions.

• Gryffindor values courage, chivalry and boldness.
• Hufflepuff values hard work, loyalty, determination, patience, friendship and fair play.
• Ravenclaw values intelligence, knowledge and wit.
• Slytherin values ambition, cunning and resourcefulness.

On reading this, I thought, ‘Hmm. Hufflepuff, I guess. Maybe Ravenclaw.’ So I searched for ‘what harry potter house quiz‘, did the first test and got these results.

Hufflepuff – 14
Ravenclaw – 12
Gryffindor – 11
Slytherin – 8

Sheesh… this sorting hat quiz is intense! There’s a consent form.

I just did that test. It was very long but at least the questions weren’t leading. I got:

Ravenclaw – 88
Hufflepuff – 85
Gryffindor – 81
Slytherin – 41

Yesterday was a fun day. I wrote some sub-sub-sections of my dissertation in the morning. In the afternoon, my college held its annual garden party, so I sat in the sunshine while eating and drinking with friends. I left the party to meet a classmate for coffee. We then walked to to a local architectural practice because the director had agreed to be interviewed for our research. After the interview, I walked home, changed, then went to Parker’s Piece for our weekly class football game. I left the game early to go to a meeting; I’m helping to organise the orientation camp for the next batch of 100 students on my scholarship. The meeting ran over time, so I was late for The Round Ceilidh at Emmanuel College. I danced English folk dances with a libraryful of people until 10:30 PM. Then I walked home.

Getting closer to the end of a degree course, it’s natural for people to start talking about careers.

‘What are you doing after this?’

‘I don’t know yet. Maybe study some more.’

‘I’m going back to my old company.’

‘I might travel a bit.’

‘I’ve got two interviews next week.’

Here’s an option for anyone who doesn’t know what they want to do for the next two years: take a pretend trip to Mars. You can apply to the European Space Agency — see the call for candidates (pdf). Now, there’s something to tell the grandkids!

This chart is based on what I spent on my last three weeks of grocery shopping. I spend £15-20 a week on groceries. I suspect that I am fruit-and-vegetable heavy and bakery light.

By the way, it was not my idea to put two decimal places on those percentages. Of course I can’t state my grocery proportions to four significant figures of accuracy. OpenOffice did that automatically and I couldn’t figure out how to change it. I don’t know if it’s because OpenOffice Calc is not user friendly or if I’m crippled by Microsoft Excel brain.

I went to Oxford on the weekend for my first gig as the designated photographer (I was paid in food, drink and dancing). The event was the Balliol College MCR garden party, ‘A Summer Night at Sea’. I learned something about being an event photographer: because you don’t know the people, it’s difficult to remember if you got everyone at some point during night.

I cannot think of the word ‘fondue’ without singing the Everything but the Girl‘s song ‘I didn’t know I was looking for love‘ …until I found you.

I’m a fan of the chocolate version, and luckily for me, Anna decided that chocolate fondue would be the centrepiece for our girls’ night in.

In a typical engineering course, you might get about 15% of students being female. Our engineering for sustainable development class is blessed with 33% women, and with the partners of men in the class, we could have up to seventeen women at our social events.

After extensive and sensitive consultation, Anna determined that it would not be politically incorrect to have a girls’ night in. Sorry guys, you’re not invited. Monday was the night (the beginning of May Week) and it was a decadant night of mojitos, corn chips, summer fruits and chocolate fondue, ice cream, jelly, buttered popcorn, chick flicks and natter about childbirth, women in science and business, the cultural role of women around the world, and… our dissertations. (There is no escape.)

The gorgeous women of the engineering for sustainable development community.

Anna and I went to the Video Emporium to hire chick flicks. Not knowing people’s precise tastes and moods, we covered all the ground and rented Like water like chocolate (foreign language weepie), Erin Brockovich (girl power + environmentalism), and My big fat Greek wedding (funny and supposedly pointpointingly accurate).