Quiz Night

Today turned out to be far more eventful than I anticipated. I still haven't gotten any further than a spider diagram when it comes to my 'project' - this needs to be arranged into a question which can then be elaborated on in my abstract. See, I know what to do, it's just getting round to doing it. But anyway, today I met up with another friend who went to Japan (but to Waseda in Tokyo - an actually prestigious university, where I was just too scared to go!) and who just moved back to Canterbury yesterday - Myra. I thought it was only going to be quite a brief meeting. We wandered around Canterbury a little while before heading up to campus to try and get a timetable for Fresher's Week. Turns out that was online, so we could have gotten it anytime or place, but we went to the library to look over it. There's much more going on than I anticipated - I don't remember half this stuff from when I was a fresher! Maybe I just didn't know where to look. But anyway, we thought we may as well make the most of the time we have now. (don't worry - the work will get done. It always does)

The things we're going to do involve a forensic taster-day thing (why not?), Italian society (the description imples free food), fencing (to add a little excitement) and a quiz night, which was tonight. It didn't leave us enough time to go back to one of our houses for dinner, so we stayed on campus and ate at the Rutherford cafeteria. What a rip-off - in case you happen to find yourself there, just, don't. And then we wandered around campus some more to see what had changed. Though there are many small changes here and there, the biggest shock was Keynes.

Old Keynes (my room's at the top)

New Keynes

This is the college I technically belong to, and where I lived in my first year. First-off, the restaurant (where no student can afford to eat) has been modernised, and in my opinion ruined the park-like feel that it used to have sitting next to the pond. Behind the block where my room was located, the space has been vastly transformed with brand-new units of student housing. Good lord it's fancy. I do hope it costs an arm and a leg compared to perhaps the oldest accomodation on campus which lies directly next to it. Where's the equilibrium?! I could've lived there... had I just been a few years younger.

Scratch that, there's no knowing how things would be if I'd been born at a different time.

Oh, and as we made our way back round to the Gulbenkian where the quiz would be held, Campus Watch drove past us in a shiny Jeep. So that's what Kent does with all this money they're making. I don't really think that's what students want.

Myra and myself got a table inside. We were shortly joined by Steve, a good friend of hers who I have et a few times before. He spent a year abroad in Hong Kong, though I guess asking how it was isn't the best way to actually get information about it. I know this from first-hand experience. And then another guy - also named Steve - came in. I didn't (still don't really) know him. Other than he does Physics, has come back for a Masters, and got screwed over by Kent Hospitality thus leaving him temporarily homeless. The 2 Steves were saying something about how their names were spelt, whether it was with a "v" or a "ph" when in full, and what this supposedly means (all in jest of course). I couldn't quite hear them though to really know what the point was, or which they were. For some reason I picture them as "v"s. My Dad's a "ph".

The 'organisers' (if that's what you can call them) then told us we needed a bigger team, and put 4 Chinese girls with us. One of them soon disappeared. I felt bad for the rest, because although their English is very strong, they didn't really understand most of the quiz. For most of the time we didn't really get to talk to them either - they were clearly happy speaking in Mandarin. Then right at the end of the quiz, for whatever reason, me and Myra decided to see what kanji we could remember. The Chinese girls noticed:

"Oh! You can write Chinese?"

Us: "Well, no, to us this is Japanese"

Them: "Oh, I see. Well, a lot of them are the same"

We tested this out. They were really impressed with what we could do. I was kind of disappointed by how much I'd forgotten. I think I could pick it up again with practice. Kanji is really very logical - once you're taught how to see them. But, with this, it dawned on me that I can actually write Chinese. Not so much in that it would get me very far - I couldn't even compose a sentence. But knowing the characters are a start.

As you've noticed the quiz itself wasn't very important. I did focus on the questions - turns out I'm quite competetive, maybe I am an Aries afterall. Thing is we never got the answers, they were just marked for us with 1st, 2nd and last places announced. The questions were mainly stupid to begin with. We then walked home. I went with them so far but then had to go a different direction alone. The way we went was down to St Stephen's Road, which isn't a way I have often been. I was slightly apprehensive of being lost but soon recognised a few landmarks. I think it's quite an interesting part of Canterbury, at least in the dark. It's almost very countryside-ish. There's one particular section of road with just a few cast iron lamp posts and a red brick wall backing onto a park. I wish I had my camera with me. I'll take it up to campus tomorrow as there a few pictures I want to take for this post.

I'm off to bed now though. I look forwards to going to regular quizzes with Myra on a Sunday this year.

Yeah, we're cool.