Wandering through Aberdeen

To get out of the city for a few days and try to take my mind off missing my best friend from high school's caribbean wedding, Derek and I booked a weekend up north in Aberdeen, Scotland's third largest city.  It took us about two and a half hours to get there on the train, during which we got to cross the Firth of Forth on the unique red Forth Rail Bridge.  We headed straight to the hotel to drop off our bags (only getting lost once, when we mistook directional signs for street signs), and then we were off to find Old Aberdeen.

The University of Aberdeen occupies much of Old Aberdeen.  There's some beautiful buildings, including King's College, and nice old cobblestone streets lined with small stone buildings.  It was very nice and peaceful, with the occasional student bustling past.  At the north end of the city was a large park which we walked through, heading east, and then walked back along King Street to the centre of town, by which time we'd walked over four miles (yes, they still use miles here).  It was around this time that my right ear was really starting to ache, so we stopped at a Tescos along the way for some paracetamol (Tylenol isn't available here).  

For supper our initial plan was to go to Jimmy Chung's, a chinese buffet restaurant chain which we like from Edinburgh, but the weekend dinner cost wasn't worth it -- I just don't eat enough.  Instead we walked to the massive Marks and Spencers about five blocks away and got some delicious chicken caesar wraps, carrot sticks and a salad, plus snacks and pop for the evening, and spent about what we would have for one of us to eat at the buffet.  But we also agreed to go out the next night, and the pizza we got was great!

Friday night I didn't sleep much -- my ear was just too painful.  I waited until 5:45am to wake Derek up and ask him to get me some ibuprofen.  That worked, or at least the first dose did.  On Saturday we were off walking again.  This time we headed east to the beach, and then walked along the coast and found ourselves in the picturesque coastal village of Footdee.  The docks were packed with ships and ferries.  We checked out the Science Museum, but it didn't seem like it was for us, but we did visit Provost Skene's House, and 17th century home of the mayor of Aberdeen that has been furnished as it would have been in the 17th and 18th centuries.  The nursery was particularly neat, as were the rooms that you could compare from different centuries.

After a lunch of M&S sandwiches we headed south to the Maritime Museum.  It was a beautiful new museum consisting of an old church, a home that was centuries old and a glass adjoining section -- very light and open, yet historical.  Too be honest, I think I found the structure, design and history of the building more interesting than the museum itself.  After a tour of some of the statues, including the massive William Wallace statue, we headed back to the room.  

Derek's knee was bothering him, and between that and my ear we were pretty much ready to rest, but first came dinner, and then a drink at The Monkey House.  Derek had spotted this pub when we first arrived in Aberdeen, and being quite the fan of monkeys, we agreed that we had to go.  The only disappointing part was that we were both stuffed from dinner, and when Derek was given two pints (Carlsberg is always 2 for 1, it turns out), the task in front of him was a bit overwhelming.  But we managed.

After another rough night (neither the paracetamol nor the ibuprofen were working anymore), we packed up and headed out.  The train did leave until 1:50pm, so we came up with low key activities for the morning.  These included sitting in the sunny gardens, sitting in the mall, and sitting in the train station waiting for the train.  We had hoped to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail on the train ride home, but with the sun shining down we couldn't see the screen nearly well enough to appreciate the subtle nuances of the humourous scenes :)  

For an epilogue, I'll mention that I was at the doctor's by 8:45am Monday morning, and by 9:05 I had a prescription for antibiotics for my ear infection and pain killers.  By Monday night following some excellent advice from family members I had a system worked out for killing the pain, and Thursday evening my right ear finally opened up.  I'm still on antibiotics, and I'll be going back to the doctor next week to get the all clear to fly home the week after. 

I'll also mention that according to eye-witnesses my dear friend is now happily married, and from the photos I've seen not only was the ceremony beautiful, but she was absolutely stunning.  And Derek and I will be back in Canada in time to attend their reception :)  

A Science Festival?

Two Fridays ago Derek and I were walking back from Tescos with a couple of groceries when we noticed two identical banners hanging from the front of McEwan Hall with the familiar 'face' of ASIMO, most likely the world's most famous and recognizable humanoid robot.  Derek got all excited (well, he noticed it), and I decided to look up ASIMO on the school's webpage when I got home.

It turns out the Edinburgh throws an annual International Science Festival, with information and tickets for the many events having been available since February.  Before I started kicking myself for not finding out about this earlier, I got onto the official website to check out the entire programme and the ticket availability for ASIMO's show at the university.  ASIMO had the distinct honour of opening the two week festival at the hall across the street from our place, and since both of us our fans, we had to get tickets.  Saturday's shows were all sold out, but Sunday's had tickets, we headed over to the University's Visitor Centre to get our tickets first thing Saturday morning.  

Sunday morning we arrived at the square across the street to join the massive queue of parents and kids and university students and seniors.  The whole presentation was pretty neat.  There was a little robot who could do pushups, a connect four robot, a cool video explaining Honda's development of humanoid robots, beginning with what looked like a massive box with legs in the mid-80s, and then out came the star.  ASIMO was very cool.  He could shake hands, grasp, hold and carry items, kick a ball, run in a straight line and around a curve, and climb up and down stairs.  Oh, and he can dance!  I can remember seeing ASIMO do the hula on the Today show years ago, so it was really neat seeing him in person, especially on his first trip to Scotland.

Last night we attended another talk, this time aimed at an older audience, but with some cartoons thrown in :)   This talk was about the dynamic simulation used at Pixar Studios in their computer animations, and was given by David Baraff, a mathematician who received an Academy Award for his work on digital representations of hair, clothing and water.  He's worked on movies like Monsters Inc. (which I love!), Finding Nemo and Ratatouille.  It was really neat to hear about some of the work that occurs behind the scenes during the 4 or 5 year process of making a Pixar movie, and I really enjoyed the hour.

I knew before we moved here the Edinburgh hosts something like 15 festivals a year, and its quite fun to have them just pop up out of nowhere.  The Science Festival turned out to be a great find, and we'll be keeping an eye out for it next year!

PS I must correct my earlier post on hockey.  It turns out that if you stay quite late in Edinburgh you may catch highlights, or even an entire game, of NHL hockey.  But I couldn't tell you when or what you might see, as those who know me know that I'm not one to stay up late.

Hockey Night in Edinburgh

About a week ago Derek and I received an exciting invitation to accompany a couple friends of mine (fellow PhD-1s from the US and Canada) to an Edinburgh Capitals game at the rather old Murrayfield Ice Rink, complete with ancient seats.   Yes, we were going to see some 'ice hockey' in Scotland.  You're probably thinking, I didn't know Edinburgh had a hockey team.  Well, it does.  And while it's no NHL, it's the closest you can get when you're living in the UK (unless you get satellite coverage of the NHL games, that is).

The Edinburgh Capitals are one of 10 teams in the Elite Ice Hockey League.  This professional UK league is the highest level of hockey you can get in the UK.  We ended up seeing their final game of the year, which was against the number one ranked team, the Sheffield Steelers.   It was a high-scoring game with lots of excitement amongst the screaming fans.  We won 5-4 in the second of the quarter-finals, but it wasn't enough to move up.  The week before, our friends reported chants of 'We're number 8!  We're number 8!,' because only the top 8 teams were going to advance to the quarter-finals.

When it comes to the quality of the hockey, it was kind of like watching two okay Canadian university hockey teams play.  Several Capitals players were Canadian, actually, but it's not surprising that they're not in the NHL.  It was pretty funny how many times the players lost track of the puck, passed in front of the net with no one taking a shot, or tripped over their own feet.  Body checking wasn't done -- it was more like one guy skating up behind the guy with the puck, putting his hands out against the boards, and the two just standing there until the puck was taken away by someone else.  I did capture one of the fights on my camera, which was kind of neat (and surprising!).  I guess things were a little tense on the ice this week.

I can't conclude my synopsis of this experience without a word about the fans.  The Capitals have a large crowd of devoted and vocal fans wearing hockey jerseys, eating mashed potatoes with gravy out of styrofoam cups and singing their hearts out.  They had songs for events, for individual players, and to counteract (drown out) the opposition's fans' songs.  A popular insult thrown at the other team's goalie was to call him a sieve, which I thought was pretty amusing.  The singing and cheering never stopped throughout the game, and we all got into it, particularly in the last two periods when we changed seats to sit amongst the cheerers.  All in all, it was a wild, very fun and very different experience.  We'll have to go again next year!