Month: April 2007

Social butterfly

I arrived back from Cornwall at 8 PM. Gina offered me a lift home and as soon as I got there, I changed into some nicer clothes and biked to the University Centre to go social dancing. It was my last chance for about three weeks. Never mind that I was exhausted!

The next day, I met up with Damjan in London. We saw the afternoon matinée of We Will Rock You. It was really good. I had no expectations going in and enjoyed it hugely. The female lead character (‘Scaramouche’) did the sarcastic funny thing really well. The male lead character (‘Galileo Figaro’) was suitably clueless.

You know, I didn’t realise how many Queen songs I knew.

I was riding home from the Cambridge train station, looking forward to finally getting a proper night’s sleep after a week of frantic socialising. As I was biking north, at the corner of my eye, I spotted Yap riding south along the footpath.

‘Hi Yap!’ I called

‘Joan! Do you know…’ Yap’s voice faded out as he zoomed by.

I squeezed the brake and stopped, pulling my bike onto the footpath. Yap and I met each other a few metres later.

‘Are you going to Arun’s thing?’ Yap asked.

‘What thing? I’ve just come back from London.’

‘Oh! It’s Arun’s birthday. I bought a cake,’ Yap said, gesturing to the bag in his bike basket. ‘They’ve been at a pub near here since about nine. Do you want to come?’

I didn’t think too long about it. ‘Okay.’

In my opinion, cake is a good enough reason for delaying sleep for a bit longer.

The New Art of War

It was 9 PM when Toria came into the lobby. The girls had assembled to discuss our evening plans. ‘Hi girls,’ Toria greeted us. ‘You know, the boys are downstairs in the pool. In the jacuzzi, in fact. It looks very funny.’

‘Really?’ I laughed. ‘Anyone got a camera? We should take a photo.’

Toria handed me her compact camera and we trooped downstairs to ogle.

We found Ian C, Abdel, Chris, Eskandar, Yap, Owen and Joe in a ring at the perimeter of the round spa. Duane was smack bang in the middle, like the hub of the strange bubbling wheel of engineering man-flesh.

I giggled like a schoolgirl and snapped two photos.

While Toria and I were loitering at the door to pool, Kiki rushed in.

‘D5 to E7,’ she called.

Duane rose a little out of the spa. He considered her announcement briefly, then said, ‘H8 to E8.’

‘H8 to E8,’ Kiki repeated. She rushed back out. Toria and I followed her as she mumbled ‘H8 to E8’ all the way to the bar, where Arun and Markus were waiting in front of the chess board.

‘H8 to E8,’ Kiki told them.

‘Ah! Told you he’d do that!’ Arun exclaimed, as he shifted the piece.

‘Tell Duane F4 to G5,’ Markus said to Kiki.

She was about to run off when Arun said, ‘Hold on! Let’s think about this…’

I shook my head in amazement. I knew Duane was the National Jamaican Chess Champion and had already crushed the best chess players in Cambridge, Oxford and London. But playing chess through Kiki-graph while lounging in a jacuzzi? That is truly boggling.

All roads lead there

‘What I want to know is, what have the Romans ever done for us?’

I flipped around to look at the questioner, two bus rows behind me. We were halfway through the exhaustingly long road trip and I was glad to be distracted by Gareth’s question. Gareth is the lone non-engineer on my course.

‘Erm. Roads? Sanitation?’ I suggested. Engineers are pretty keen on these sorts of things.

Gareth (a physicist) waved these off.

‘Aquaducts?’

‘Democracy?’

The contributions were coming in thick and fast. All were summarily dismissed. ‘Just minor civilisation building stuff,’ was the critical evaluation.

‘What about the calendar?’

Gareth brightened. ‘Yeah, okay. The calendar was pretty good. I’ll give them that.’

‘And blood thirsty spectator sports?’ I murumured. But it was too late and the conversation had moved on.