Monday, October 22, 2007

shopping!

On Saturday, Joandi, Lani, Urvashi, and I went to Dundee for some shopping. Dundee itself is rather industrial and not the awesomest of cities, but it is a city, and that's a pretty big deal coming from St Andrews. I think we only had about 4 hours of shopping time when you factor in the 30 minute bus ride either way and lunch, but in that small amount of time I managed to acquire the largest amount of goods ever. I know it's a fad, but I think I have jumped onto the Primark bandwagon. Shopping in there is so much fun because you can pretty much buy anything you like, since it will undoubtedly cost a humorously small sum. A nice little outlet for my hedonistic shopping tendencies.

Shopping in Dundee was my first venture out of St Andrews since getting here. That being said, there are lots of opportunities to get out of town and see some other parts of Scotland. This Friday, I'm going on a trip to the Edinburgh zoo organized by the undergraduate Psychology Society, and a few weeks from now there's a trip to the Edinburgh Castle which is looking mighty tempting. A bunch of the Psychology departments in Scotland have created a program together in which training sessions for first-years are conducted at a different campus every month. It's all paid for by the department, so there's really no excuse not to go - the first one's in Glasgow.

And then of course, there's the rest of Europe that requires exploring: France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Greece...

Friday, October 12, 2007

Sweet

So yesterday, I had a meeting with Tecumseh. I told him what I wanted to do my research on and he told me that, magically, that was the subject of a grant he has. So, by sometime next week I should be "employed". By that I mean I should be getting paid to do research work that I want to do anyway for my own thesis. Yahoo, free money!

As a happy side effect of this arrangement, I no longer have to pay my 8 billion dollar Overseas Student tuition, because student employees of the school working in excess of 18.21 hours per week are exempt from tuition. More free money!

I'm also excited about the schooling prospects in terms of the project I've taken on. It sounds like it's going to be really cool. It also sounds like I'm going to have to program things, ugh, but I think it's in Python, and I also think that Python is probably pretty easy. I would try to explain what I'm studying but my recent attempts to do so have mostly made people more confused.

Went out last night in search of hot guys slash potential marriage material for my flatmate. The mission was unsuccessful, largely due to the fact that all the attractive men here are 17 years old. Which is actually pretty okay by me.

P.S. I'm about 97% sure I saw Cedric Diggory walking around on South Street this afternoon. Not sure why he was in a Madras College high school uniform though...

This is so hot

My supervisor wrote an article that made it to the cover of Nature.

Thursday, October 4, 2007

School

You may be wondering where I have been for the past few days. Has she been having brilliant Scottish adventures?, you may ask. Perhaps she has been attending so many merry ceilidhs that she has no time to update her blog? Or maybe she has acquired a handsome new boyfriend who bears a striking resemblance to Cedric Diggory and is taking up all her time? Well it turns out that the answer to that last question is a resounding "YES" - if by Cedric Diggory, you meant school.

That's right, I had my first couple days of school this week and am in the process of trying to figure out what exactly being a PhD student is all about. Cause here's the thing: they've given me a desk, a computer, and a supervisor. What they haven't given me is any classes, assignments, readings, projects, or other task that is easily identifiable from undergrad. I have yet to understand what I'm actually supposed to DO at my desk, on my computer, for my supervisor. I never realized just how vague of a word "research" is.

A few things have become (slightly more) clear, however. I've been reading a fair number of scientific papers and have come to the conclusion that I probably want to look at chimpanzees and their ability to learn syntax - using artificial grammars, statistical learning, eye tracking, and whatever else I can think of. I also have some inclination to look at their ability to use or produce grammatical phrases, rather than just learning them, probably using gestural communication, but I have no idea how one would go about doing that. I have also been informed that if I want to study chimpanzees, I can do so come February or so, in Texas. So if anyone wants to hang out in the Deep South in late winter...

Heading out for a walk on the beach. Cheers.

Saturday, September 29, 2007

Out

So tonight, we decided to go out. One of the girls upstairs had been told by a random guy that The Lizard was the place to be, so we got all excited for dancing and headed over there. First warning sign: there was a decent-sized line outside, full of girls whose choice of attire was clearly weather-inappro. Which is obviously what one expects from a line outside a "club", but we were fully sober and actually desirous of dancing, not skanking. Inside was a small, hot, sweaty, low-ceilinged, skanktastic mash of drunk seventeen-year-olds, all super-excited to finally move out of home and conceive babies on the dancefloor. Needless to say, our foray there did not last long.

We went in search of a pub for a beer, and ended up going to the place that Sandra (the room directly above mine) was going to play open mic at on Monday. Thankfully, the patrons were distinctly more dignified, and we caught the tail end of an old-man Blues band. They also had a glorious selection of European beer, and it got rather packed towards the end, so I think we determined that we like it and that we're going back.

Moral of the story: the British are known for their pubs for a reason.

During the day, I met a bunch of the other new Psychology PhD students, picked up my building swipe card and the key to our "office", claimed a desk for my own, and ate a LOT of free food. Pretending to be Islamic rocks.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

The beginning, part II

The night before I left, quite honestly, I was more apprehensive than excited. I knew I would love it here as soon as I'd settled in a little, met a few people, and knew what I was doing. But it was that first week or so that concerned me.

Oh, how terribly foolish I was!

It's currently approaching midnight of my first full day here and I'm definitely in excited-mode. I spent the majority of the last couple of days unpacking all my worldly belongings and finding them all places in the little room I now call "home". More accurately, "home" is a four-girl flat: one of six similar flats in Stanley Smith House, a postgraduate residence. I say "similar" rather than "identical" because all the other flats are apparently all the same, but ours is bigger and more glorious because it's the wheelchair-accessible one... which makes me a little sad for everyone else because our place is tiny!

My building is in a sketchy little alleyway that the Madras College (it's a high school) kids frequent as a tucked-away place to get drunk and smoke. That being said, it's also splat in the middle of town, with nothing I have yet wanted to attend more than a seven minute walk away. St Andrews is ridiculously small, but considering its size, it has a decent number of shops, bars, etc.; actually, if you consider the fact that nobody from Queen's bothers to venture any further than Princess Street, it's not really that far off. Apparently what it's quite good for is "charity shops" - essentially second-hand stores. Just today, I was walking towards the Psychology building to see if my professor was in (he wasn't), and I fell in love with a coat in a charity shop window. It was this beautiful offwhite, knee-length, quilted thing with fur trim - practical, yet stylish. And wonder of wonders, it was my size! And a mere 25 pounds (or should I say "quid" - I'm planning on coming back with some obnoxious British slang in my vocabulary). I didn't want to walk into my prof's office with shopping, however, so I decided to pick it up on my way back. Ten minutes later, I'm coming up to the store and notice the coat is no longer on the mannequin... because someone had bought it! In those intervening ten minutes! Frick on an effing stick.

Other than pretty coats, I've been shopping for various things I actually need: groceries, another blanket (it's cold!), a lamp, dishes, etc. You may already know that I adore grocery shopping (almost as much as toothbrush shopping!) but it was even more exciting today. Everything is a tiny bit different: the layout of the store, the meat selection, the strangely packaged vegetables that come with cooking instructions, the availability of liquor in a grocery store - well, I got used to that one this summer in Europe. I think the best part is the fact that Indian food is so common here! Glory.

Now I'm going to tell you about my flatmates. Danielle is Chinese and rather quiet and I've barely seen her yet, although she does make a mean egg-tomato soup. Mohira is the building's RA. She's from Tajikistan, although from what I gather she's also lived in the USSR, USA, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. She already did her Masters here so she answers all our inane questions about how to do things and get places. I was introduced to my final flatmate, Urvashi, when she accosted me on the street yesterday demanding to know whether I was Shilpa, and if so, where in India was I from and did I want to hang out later? She's from Delhi and one of her friends from home, Rithvik, is also here and hangs around our flat a lot because his residence is far away from downtown.

Earlier tonight, Mohira and Urvashi ran into the girls from the flat right above ours who they met the night before I got here, and they came back to our place to drink a couple of cocktails and watch Friends. So, I hung out with them as well which was cool although I can't remember their names for the life of me. They seem like solid people and I think we're going out to "The Lizard" tomorrow, whatever that is. They're from the Philippines, Holland, and Toronto. Seriously, the international-ness of this school is completely ridiculous!

And that is the very beginning of me in Scotland.

The beginning

I have arrived.

I am in my new bed in my new flat. And I am so incredibly tired. Almost too tired to sleep.

Almost.