Thanks for All of the Birthday Wishes!!
I would really like to thank everyone for the incredible outpouring of birthday messages. A special thank you to all of my family in Hong Kong. It was lovely to hear from all of you! I hope to see you guys soon!
My actual birthday was last Tuesday, but seeing as most of us had exams the following day, or like unlucky Don, the next two days, the actual festivities were postponed. However, I did take a bit of a study break to get a good haircut
Just kidding!
and to go out to dinner with Don to a really yummy Jamaican restaurant, Coyaba. We shared the Mango and Ginger Salmon and Curried Goat. Needless to say we finished every bit of it and that I have not been that full for some time.
We went out to play a few games of pool and for some celebratory end-of-term and birthday drinks on Friday – in retro costume! The outing itself was loads of fun on its own, but the night was made complete by the barbecue we had in the courtyard of College Wynd. The original plan had been to hike up Calton Hill and have a sunrise barbecue there, but Scotland being Scotland decided to dump wind and rain on us at around 2am, so we nixed the idea. (Thank god because I was pretty tired by that point!). The courtyard barbecue was good fun, though. We changed into our pajamas and set up the 99p disposable grill that we bought and grilled burgers and sausages with some guy that we didn’t know that just wanted to sit by a fire. Well, that is until the rain came. Luckily, we didn’t have to move far as the kitchen of Don and Fernando’s flat faces the courtyard, so we just handed everything through the window and put out the grill. Just as well because the shitty grill was just not going to do for the sausages and we were all really hungry.
I really can’t say how appreciative I am of all the effort that Don and Celia put into my birthday and of course my other friends for costume hunting on short notice. I really could not have asked for a better end to our semester here than to have spent it with the great friends that we’ve made and with grilled meat. Sadly, Celia did have to leave not very many hours after this, but we do hope that she will visit us soon!
Also, we’re leaving tomorrow morning for a bona fide Scottish adventure: Me, Don, and Fernando are renting a car and driving up to Inverness for the night! We will be stopping in the town of Pitlochry and also Edradour Distillery (the smallest whiskey distillery in Scotland) just outside of it on our way north. After that we will make our way up to Loch Ness for a cruise during which we hope to be eaten by the monster. We figure we have a decent shot as we don’t actually believe in Nessie, which means karma will have to boomerang around and we will have to be eaten, thus proving the monster’s existence. Anyway, wish us luck! We’ll check back in a couple of days with some more photos.
- Nateene
Exams at the University of Edinburgh
We’re done! And at this school, being done with final exams is the same as being completely free of academic obligation. The exam period went by fairly quickly for both of us, and our timetable was spaced out enough to ease some of the mental pressure. The exam format changes slightly depending on the subject, but for the most part is focused on writing one or two essays from a choice of questions over the course of two hours. The exam halls are very traditional in appearance, and resemble this:
As all of my classes were honors option philosophy courses, all of my exams looked very similar. I managed to feel pretty relaxed or even pleased walking out of them, even though it is nearly impossible to anticipate the sort of questions that will be on the exam. This is my first problem with this system of evaluation: when you have the content of an entire semester to choose from, you don’t have much of a guide as to which ten questions will be extracted for the exam. It’s true that the University posts copies of old exam questions online, but the number available for both me and Nateene was patchy. Two of my classes only had one previous question sheet posted, but one (Modern Continental Philosophy) had four. Can you guess which exam was written most strategically?
Continuing on the topic of preparation by considering old exams, it’s important to note that the syllabus for a given course changes from year to year. For example, my Modern Continental course focused only on Husserl, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein. This was the right decision to make on the part of the professor, as all of those thinkers are extremely dense. But in past years, Sartre was also included in the syllabus, and so there were questions about Sartre on all the old exams. This did me no favors. It was even worse for my Advanced Topics in Philosophy of Science course, which only had one previous exam posted. The old syllabus did not include sections on philosophy of biology or quantum physics, but did include a segment on Van Frassen’s empiricism. Because Philosophy of Science is my strongest topic, this wasn’t much of an issue. But in either of my other courses, where I was less familiar with the content, it might have been catastrophic.
Don’t get the wrong idea: all of my exams, ultimately, went pretty smoothly. I also had some very good luck, and experienced some pretty rigorous preparation. Hampshire kids can do well here, if only because there’s very little guidance on what content you should have in mind before you go into an exam. If you’re self-directed enough to design your own course of study, you should be self-directed enough to kick your own ass into doing serious revision starting at least a week before each exam. My bitterness comes from the fact that you can do an excellent revision and still have terrible luck. Unfortunately, Nateene had a taste of the bad luck that I managed to dodge.
Unlike philosophy exams, the format of Art History exams is such that you must answer one image identification question and then an essay question of your choice. In a generous gesture, Nateene’s art history professor had nearly all of the images from his lectures put up on the course website, for a total of more than 300 images. Nateene went through just about all of them, especially those that carried the most historical weight and therefore the greatest chances of appearing on the exam. There was a seizing up of most students in the exam, however, upon first looking at the corresponding question. Three out of four of the images on the exam, it turned out, were not among those posted on the website. Now, it didn’t say anywhere that the website held the totality of images for the course, but it seems pretty cruel to put up 300 images and not have at least a majority of the exam images come from that pool. All the same, Nateene managed to take a stab at the question and knock out a decent essay for the question of her choice. I’m just glad that I didn’t have such a curveball on my exams.
My final complaint will be less relevant to future University students, at least those taking a course in Philosophy. Most departments are already ahead of this, and it will change to a more sane method of evaluation by next year. But for 2007-08, one’s mark in a philosophy class is totally determined by one’s mark on the exam. Any papers I wrote or presentations I gave were only formative- they were practice, as it were, for the exam. I was able to profitably study from the presentation I wrote on adaptationism for my Philosophy of Science exam, but the mark I received for the presentation in now way influences my final grade. This is not true of Nateene’s papers. Her mark for the course will be based on the different marks she received for different pieces of work. The philosophy department is undergoing a change where they can assign different weights to papers and presentations, and will be implemented by next year. I’m glad– it’s bad enough to be evaluated with an exam and a letter mark, rather than an evaluation, but to be evaluated ONLY on the basis of exam performance is ludicrous. My courses and professors here were great, but the method of evaluation in no way stacks up to that of Hampshire. Having gone to a school with evaluations for my first few semesters, I don’t think I had a full sense of appreciation. Written evaluations are by far the more satisfying method of evaluation.
- Don
Princes Street Gardens
Sunlight has finally begun to regularly appear in Edinburgh! When we first arrived, the sun wasn’t fully up until around 10:00 AM, and was down by 5:00 PM. From today’s perspective, it seems like an exaggeration. The sun comes up very early in the morning and stays up until 9:00 PM. One of the best places to enjoy all this light is in Princes Street Gardens. We’ve been a few times, for a few hours each time, and now the time is right to share the pictures.
On a day with good weather, the Gardens attract a lot of people in search of relaxation.
It was a Bank Holiday yesterday, bright and warm. Between the holiday and the weather, the gardens were packed. The difference that only a few days make is very clear between the two images. The last one was taken on April 27th, and this one on May 2nd. It only took five more days for the trees in the gardens to bloom.
May is good
Clearly, the gardens are meant for picnics. Here’s Celia enjoying a cheese-biscuit-and-grape sandwich.
And here’s Nateene with some freshly whipped ice cream.
Final Exams are imminent, but the relaxation Edinburgh provides is a good counterbalance. I hope that May looks this good for all of you!
-Don and Nateene
B-Sides Part I
These are some of the photos that we’ve taken that didn’t necessarily fit into previous posts but that I thought you might enjoy. Many of them are silly, poor quality, totally nonsensical, they run the gamut, but I do like them. Hopefully, you will too!
- Nateene
PS – Exams are moving in! First one is in less than a week! Wish me luck! Back to the books!
Arthur’s Seat in the Spring
Out of Edinburgh’s many attractions, I thought that my brother would enjoy a walk in Holyrood Park the most. The weather predictions have not been cooperating with this idea, but the forecasts have been wrong every day for the last week. It’s almost as if the local meteorologists have given up, and decided that if they predict rain for the whole day, every day, that they have a fifty percent chance of being right at any given time.
The problem is, that means that we think it will rain all day, and then wind up with long periods of beautiful weather. Fed up with it, we decided that today was going to have beautiful weather no matter what was predicted and went up Arthur’s Seat in the park. We were drizzled on for about five minutes on the way down, but it only made the grass greener.
Now, without further ado, I can post a picture of my Yeti brother at the summit. He’s standing on top of the plaque that most people use as an anchor.
Here is a shot from the west side of Arthur’s Seat of Edinburgh. The green swath in the center of the shot are The Meadows. The towers to the right of the Meadows sit around George Square, the main campus of the University.
This is a shot of the path that winds up the west face of Arthur’s Seat. There are other paths, but this one consists of a granite staircase that goes almost all the way to the top.
And here is a shot of that green grass I wrote about.
- Don
The Everhart Boys
We went out with the Yeti today to the Princes Street Gardens. Here are some photos of our mini-adventure:
The Yeti does Edinburgh! SMASH!
-Don and Nateene
Yeti!
Don’s brother, Les (otherwise known as The Rare and Elusive Fuzz Fuzz Yeti), has finally made it over the pond! He will be here for a little under a week and then will be headed into the wilds of Scotland to farm for a couple weeks. More photos to come soon!
- Don and Nateene
The Adventures of Haggis and Haji!
We’ve added a new section to our blog called The Adventures of Haggis and Haji. You can find the link to it over in the sidebar on the right. ———>
-Nateene and Don
Toad in the Hole Recipe
This is the meal that Susie (Celia’s mother) served us for dinner the first night that we arrived in Shrewsbury. This is traditional English cooking at its best. Surprisingly. And here is the recipe that we promised you:
Serves 4
8 Pork Sausages
110g (4oz) Plain White Flour
300ml (½ pint) Milk
2 Small Eggs
½ tsp Salt
Place the flour in a bowl, then make a well in the centre and break in the egg.
Mix in half the milk using a wooden spoon, work the mixture until smooth then add the remaining milk.
Beat or whisk until fully combined and the surface is covered with tiny bubbles.
Allow to rest for 15 to 30 minutes, whisk again before use.
Preheat the oven to 230°C; 450°F: Gas 8
Fry the sausages in a pan to lightly colour and remove excess fat, reserve the fat.
Place the fat in a small roasting tin adding a little oil, if needed, to bring the amount of fat up to about 4 tbsp.
Heat the fat until smoking hot then pour in the batter.
Add the sausage chunks and place into the hot oven.
Bake for about 5-10 minutes at 230°C; 450°F: Gas 8, then reduce to 200°C; 400°F: Gas 6 and bake 20 to 30 minutes or until the batter around the sausages has risen and is a deep golden brown.
Serve immediately or the pudding will deflate.
-Nateene and Don
http://thefoody.com and image from wikimedia
Sushi Success at Home
Last night Don and I made two kinds of sushi for dinner (smoked salmon and teriyaki chicken). This was not the first time that we’ve made sushi at home, but it was probably the best yet. And to make the victory even sweeter: we used the cheapest ingredients available. We used the cheapest fish, salmon trimmings, clearance grilled chicken breast, homemade teriyaki sauce, cucumber, avocado, and green onion. The only ingredient that was not on sale was the rice. (We splurged on Nishiki). In other words, we made a delicious sushi dinner that left the two of us stuffed for under ten quid!
Sorry about the image quality, the light in the kitchen is a bit camera hostile.
Side note: Read Along with Nateene!
At the moment I am reading Peter Murray’s The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance in preparation for my Bramante exam that is coming up in less than a month. Also I’m reading Francis Haskell’s History and its Images: Art and the Interpretation of the Past and Ovid’s Metamorphoses as some initial research for my Div III. If you’re interested, here is the very preliminary draft of my Division III proposal:
For my Division III I would like to study the nature of the relationship between the Catholic Church and pagan iconography. Specifically, I intend to research the Church’s use of Roman idolatry in High Renaissance art (painting and sculpture) to propagate Christian virtues.
I am also interested in investigating the utilization of iconography as a display of dominance and as a historical index. I would like to examine the incorporation of Roman mythology into Christian art as a parallel to the Roman usurpation of Greek myths and fables.
Furthermore, I also intend to examine the role that mythological iconography has played and continues to play in contemporary art. Through my research I hope to learn whether or not we, as a more global society, have continued the tradition of adapting classical iconography to our own purposes. In specific, I would like to analyze the function of such art (be it classical or modern) as an indicator of prestige.
During the F2008 semester I plan to take Seminar Topics in Christianity and Visual Culture [SC] and also The Collector: Theory and Practice [HC].
I would love to hear your thoughts!
-Nateene
