On the weekend it was one of my friend's Birthdays, so some of us decided to celebrate their Birthday on Tuesday. They wanted it simple and not have too many people to make a fuss about it, so it was just a few of us after the Optics Society meeting. We managed to make it a surprise and we got her a card and some flowers. Also one of my friends had wanted to make a tiramisu, so on Monday night we went out and got all the ingredients he needed to make the tiramisu and then we went back and I helped him make it. I had never really had a tiramisu before and judging by the name it sounded quite difficult, but ultimately once you had the right ingredients it was fairly simple. It just some homemade cream and coffee on these hard sponge cake finger cookies. Basically once you have made the cream you then layer some of the cookies and coat the cookies in coffee and cream (ironically "coffee and cream" is the name of a fast food restaurant beside the campus). You just continue doing this to all of the layers (minimum 3 layers) and then on the top layer you got to make sure there is a crap load of cream on top and then sprinkle some chocolate. Once finished you let it set over night so that the cookies can soak up all of the coffee and cream. On Tuesday we then managed to surprise the birthday girl (I think she was surprised anyways) and we all had the tiramisu and it turned out great.
I don't have the actual picture yet, but it looked kind of like this, but i'll post the actual picture when i get it :P
On Wednesday we made a quick little dinner since it was a busy day for everyone with classes and meetings, but we ended up having a pasta dish and then a potato bake. We had also planned to have a third year optometry student come over to have dinner with us too and also practice our ophthalmoscopy skills using her ophthalmoscope. It turned out well, although we didn't have too much time to practice, as the batteries died in her ophthalmoscope, but we're going to try and practice some more next week. She ended up having a Welch Allyn Ophthalmoscope which was nice to practice with a bit since the vast majority here are made by Keeler (a UK company). The products of the two companies appear essentially the same, but the designs are completely different, as well they all have a few slightly different features.
Welch Allyn Keeler
It's good to practice with the different ones, since we have been told that we must purchase our Ophthalmoscope, Retinoscope, and a trial frame by the end of January. Although I shouldn't really complain about it at all since these are basically the only instruments that we have to purchase during our studies, while I believe that in North America you have to purchase a lot more equipment.
Remember, remember the fifth of November ... that was this Thursday! Over here apparently Guy Fawkes Day (also known as Bonfire Day) is basically like a big holiday (similar to our Victoria Day in Canada, except here it isn't a bank holiday). On Thursday evening a few of us wanted to go out and do something for Guy Fawkes Day. We had heard about two celebrations in town which were both about an hours walk (in different directions) from campus. We weighed all the options and opted to go to the one at Birmingham University, and I think we made the best choice. Seeing as it was about an hours walk, we of course opted to take a bus to the University. This was my first trip on the Birmingham bus system, and I was really hoping it would be on a double decker bus. But I figured with my luck it would likely just be a standard bus, or even one of those articulating buses that you see in Ottawa. It turned out to be my lucky day, as it was a double decker! On the way to the University we decided to stay on the lower level, since none of us had been to Birmingham University before, and actually it was the first time any of us had ridden on a bus in Birmingham, so we wanted to make sure we got off at the right spot. We managed to easily get to the University and it was really quite neat. Birmingham University seems to have a big residence area with a bunch of trees, grass, hill, and a big enough pond that they could actually call it a lake (unlike Aston's "lake" which is smaller than the pond that I grew up with).
They ended up having a decent sized "fun fair" with a bunch of carnival rides, a few games and a few food vendors. We walked around a bit and saw everything that was going on, and eventually found the Birmingham University's juggling Society who was juggling fire down by the pond. It also turned out that apparently this was going to be the best spot to watch the fireworks. We hung out there and watch the people juggle the fire for about an hour.
It turned out to be a typical English night, with all the rain, and so we wondered if they were going to cancel the fireworks, but luckily they didn't (apparently it is very rare for them to cancel a fireworks display due to rain in England). We ended up standing under some umbrellas and watched the fireworks display.
I know it kind of looks like snow but it's just the flash off the rain! I swear!
The fireworks show lasted about half an hour, and there were a bunch of neat fireworks that I hadn't seen before. It was a really good fireworks show.
Once it finished we tried to walk back to the bus stop, but it turned out that there was so many people there and everyone was trying to go back to the main walkway and it turned out to be shear grid lock. It ended up taking about twenty minutes cooped up in a massive crowd of a few thousand people before we finally got out of the crowd. On the way back to the bus I also stopped off at one of the vendors and picked up some cotton candy. We then went and took the bus back. This time I made sure we got up on the upper deck of the bus and I sat right overtop of the driver, it was awesome! It turned out to be a great night!
Since then I haven't really done anything, except study :P
Cheers,
Jeff
*word of the week: North Amercian "Cotton Candy" is just called "Candy Floss" here. It's very odd I find since cotton candy looks like a bunch of cotton, and not at all like floss. Plus there is no way that you could floss your teeth with it either!
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