First week of Term #2

Classes started up once again this week. Almost all of the classes continue on after our midterms, except for Clinical Visual Optics (CVO). CVO we had during our first term, but this term we don't have any lectures in this subject, instead we just have a group project to do, yet the odd thing is hat we still have a final exam in this course. It was going to be nice having one less lecture/course each week, but of course school is never that nice; instead we have started a new course Vision and Visual Perception (VVP). On Monday we had our very first VVP lecture and it was quite interesting, as it seems to be like a philosophy course which is entirely related to optometry. The topics we'll be covering appears to be mainly vision (colour, spatial, dynamic, in infants, etc), how we perceive the world and how our mind interprets and understands the information it receives from our eyes. We will even have a whole lecture devoted entirely to visual illusions, which looks like it will be an extremely interesting.

I know that I just finished midterms and really I should probably take a bit of a longer break, but I've already started to lightly review what we had been taught this past week. I basically did it since if I stop studying now it just is so hard to start again. I've been good each day this week by studying a bit, but now the real trick is going to be to see if I can keep it up :P

On Thursday we just had two lab classes, so after those a few of my friends and I all decided to go to see the movie Avatar. We had been talking about going to see it for awhile now, but we finally went. We had heard that the film is best in IMAX 3-D, so we looked and found that there is one not too far away. We walked over and watched a matinee showing. The theatre was in the Millennium Point Think Tank here in Birmingham, and it is a really neat building. Birmingham City University seems to have a bunch of its arts courses housed here in this relatively new building. Also the "Think Tank" is in this building, which looks like it's probably some sort of neat science museum/planetarium. It looked really neat so we might go back another day and check it out. We ended up getting tickets for the show and then went and lined up to get into the theatre (we were about 30min early and so we managed to be at the front of the line). We got our choice of seats, so of course picked middle seat near the top. The screen wasn't as large as I had expected for an IMAX, but it was still bigger than the average theatre screen. We were also given some one size fits all 3-D goggles which even fit over glasses (if you wear them). The movie turned out to be quite interesting and very entertaining. It was a bit disappointing though as I thought that the 3-D effects might have been a bit better, but there were a few moments that made good use of the 3-D effect. The 3-D goggles after a bit started to irritate my nose near the end of the film, but it was still a good movie and a great experience. The crazy part of the whole adventure was finding out how close the theatre is! It turned out that the theatre is literally across the road so it took us all of about 2 minutes to walk there (since traffic was a bit busy :-P), so I'm sure we'll be going back at least to see another movie, or at least to go to the Think Tank.

This week I also figured out what I will be doing for accommodations next year. Here at Aston, all international students are guaranteed a place in residence for every year, but home/UK students are only really able to stay in residence during there first and last years. Two of my friends are UK/home students who needed to find a place to live next year. It seemed to be to be really early to start looking, but apparently it's actually a bit late, as many places get completely booked up for by January (for the start of the 2010/2011 academic year). I went looking with them and it turns out that basically all of the places in Birmingham for students are essentially within a five minute walk to campus, and all of them have a similar floor plan to that of the new residences on campus (and even cost the same amount). It's kind of odd that way actually. But all of the residences consists of a room with an en-suit bathroom and a group of 3-8 people all sharing the kitchen (which is the same as most of those on campus next year since Aston is tearing down all of the old residences as they are currently completing a huge brand new residence complex). Ultimately my friends liked the look of one place called "The Heights" which is an off campus privately run residence that is across the street from Aston's main building. I liked the look of it and also that I would know who I would be living with (since in on campus accommodations you can't really specify who you would like to live with). We ended up taking a unit at The Heights; so there will be myself, another Canadian friend and our other two UK/home friends. The place we got is one of the better 4 bedroom units as it is on the top (6th) floor of one of the buildings with a view of Birmingham (instead of a view of the road and Aston University). I am definitely looking forward to having my own room with my own bathroom (as I’m starting to get tired of sharing by bathroom with 5 other guys), but even though we will be sharing the kitchen, I’m sure it’ll work out well since we all cook and eat together right now anyways.

*pic from google street view

On Friday after two lectures in the morning, a bunch of my friends (and even a few of our lecturers) all went over to a pub for lunch and a drink. It was a great way to wind down the week, but the main reason we did it was because in about an hour we were all going to have to go back to talk to our personal tutors (during our orientation week groups of about 10 students were assigned to a faculty member/lecturer who would be our personal tutor) to get our midterm marks, so many of us were a little nervous. It ended up being a great way to lessen our anxiety, and I'm not sure if it was because of the alcohol, or just the stories/conversations we were having, but whatever the reason it worked well. I wasn't too worried about my marks, but I was a bit nervous, since it was my first set of real tests since I had arrived. Ultimately I ended up being very pleased with my midterm marks as I was fairly consistent with my marks, over all six exams, I ended up with an average of about 77%. The weirdest thing was the class averages for the midterms as they varied greatly (one course had a class average of 73% while another had an average of 47% - which here anything over 40% is still considered a pass). The best part was that I had made a bet with one of my friends concerning our marks, which I ended up winning, so Friday night I got a free desert AND a drink :D.

And so that was my week...

Jeff


* Word of the Week: On Friday when I went to order a sticky toffee pudding for desert I asked for a "pudding" so they asked me which one. This confused me a bit since the pub's only pudding was this sticky toffee pudding, so I asked what other ones they have. The server proceeded to read off the entire desert menu to me, and so I ended up pointing at the sticky toffee pudding. Afterwards I ended up asking one of my friends about it and it turns out that in England the word "pudding" refers to any "desert", so it could be cake, sundae, pie, etc.

Midsessional Exams

Right after Christmas on the Monday I had my first midterm/midsessional exam in the UK. It is a bit unusual for me how the midterms are structured here, as we have no classes during our two week exam period. As well the exams are written in large rooms where we are each randomly assigned a desk to sit at, we must have a clear pencil case and if calculators are needed they are provided. It is all very serious and seemed almost as intense as final exams that I have had back in Canada. It was good in a was since we had the whole two weeks to focus on our 6 midterms exams, but the down side is it really made the time drag on, as it seems like I have been back here for months, but it really was only two weeks! The midterms themselves actually didn't seem too bad (but of course some seemed to go a bit better than other). Now I just can't wait until I get my marks back, which rumour has it will be with in a week or so.

As well this was probably the first time that I have ever written exams and not had to work during the exam period, so what I decided to try and do was grow a beard. The last time I shaved was on Saturday the 9th and then I didn’t shave again until Saturday the 23rd

Yeah so my conclusion is well after two weeks I definitely cannot grow a noticeable amount of facial hair (well except for a slight porn stash :P), but on the upside I found that it probably would have kept me a bit warmer (provided it had been cold here) and also I normally rub my cheeks and stroke my chin when thinking and studying, but now with the facial hair I found it helped me think. Well so now that exams are over again I’ll probably continue with my normal clean shaven self, but I’m still toying with the idea of trying again after my last day of lectures and when I come for the summer (about 6weeks).

After half of my mid term exams were done with I had a few days off before my next midterm, so I spent a few hours and did a little shopping. My mother had given me a few pounds for Christmas, so I had decided to purchase some socks and underwear… (very lame I know, but it was easier than doing laundry, and well I was getting tired of doing laundry every week, yes I probably could have brought more back from Canada but due to weight restrictions I choose a few boxes of KD over socks and underwear)...anyways so I went into town and went to a few stores. I was amazed to find such a huge selection of socks everywhere I went. See I’m use to men’s socks basically being black or white, and occasionally getting the odd grey or blue one but nothing like this! Here they have every colour imaginable, as well as socks with Simpson’s, family guy, soccer/football, beer, basically anything and everything! It of course ended up taking much longer than expected for my shopping trip, but ultimately I am so very excited about the socks that I ended up getting. I found these great Day of the Week socks with cool happy faces...you have no idea how excited I am about these and I started wearing them on Monday :D

It also happened that the day of our third midterm (out of six) one of my friends had a Birthday (nothing better than having to write an exam on your birthday :P), so after the exam a group of us took him out to a local restaurant; Pizza Express. It made for a nice afternoon to let us unwind and forget about our exams for a bit.

About a week later it was our last midterm exam which happened to fall on a Saturday morning, so a group of us decided to have a celebratory brunch. We ended up making some Aunt Jamima Pancakes (so real North American style pancakes), Maple syrup (from Canada) and some bacon.

We also had some toast with some Kraft Peanut butter and Marmite.

Marmite was really the only non Canadian thing we had, but we had to try it. Marmite is this greasy, browny black paste made from brewers yeast (and honestly it looks like something scrapped out of a sewer) that some British people enjoy on toast (and with several other foods as well). Of course it looked fairly gross, but of course I had to try it and well it definitely didn't taste like it looked. It was actually very strange because it tasted like I had just dumped a jar of salt on my toast, if I had gotten past the saltiness I don't think it would have been too bad, but salt on toast unfortunately I just couldn't do. But it was an experience and well now at least if someone asks if I would like some Marmite with my toast I can say "no, but could you please spread some on our walk to melt the ice".

You would then think that after the Marmite I would hold off on trying different food for a bit, and well I didn't (instead I just decided to stay away from the British food) since that very night a bunch of us went over to a new friends place for a sort of dinner party and we had Indian food. It was different food from the Indian food that I had already tried, and well unfortunately I can't remember the names of these dishes, but just that they were phenomenally good, since I was a bit concerned as I wasn't sure how spicy it would be. Fortunately he has gotten very good at making the food with very little spice over the years. On Sunday I had some more friends cook and this time we had a lupper (late lunch/early dinner) consisting of mainly Iranian dishes as well as a Greek pasta dish. It was a really interesting mix of food and it turned out that the Greek dish was kind of like Italian lasagne but with different noodles. It was all really good and even the leftovers the next few days were amazing.

On Saturday night after dinner I ended up calling it a night around midnight and ended up going back to my flat and watched a Toronto Rock lacrosse game. As many of you probably know I use to play lacrosse for several years, and so lately I have found myself enjoying going to the Toronto Rock games, and last year I managed to make it to four or five games last season. This year I had originally planned on doing the same, but well it's a bit too far for me to travel, so instead I find myself running home Saturday nights to watch the games online. Luckily for me the NLL (National Lacrosse League) shows all of the games on their website, so I have managed to see all three of the Toronto Rock's wins. After the first weekend I was procrastinating a bit and decided to make some predictions as to how the NLL season will end up, and I've decided to mention how I think the teams will end up being ranked and it'll be interesting to see how I did (if I was even remotely close). I think I’m somewhat confident of these top four teams, but as for the rest we'll just have to see

1. Washington Stealth
2. Toronto Rock
3. Orlando Titans
4. Calgary Roughnecks
5. Rochester Knighthawks
6. Colorado Mammoth
7. Buffalo Bandits
8. Boston Blazers
9. Minnesota Swarm
10. Edmonton Rush
11. Philadelphia Wings

Well now I think that brings us up to date again :-)

Jeff

*Word of the Week: "invigilate" turns out to be a fancy British word for "proctor". As well I'm not sure if it's because of the high international student population at this school, or the large number of masters and PhD students or if it is a UK thing but it seems like many people use the word "paper" and "exam" synonymously.

Christmas in Canada

It was first thing Saturday morning that I left to go back to Canada. I flew directly out of Birmingham International and had a little layover in Zurich. I got to Birmingham airport just under 3hrs in advance for check-in, just in case there was a line or a long delay at security, but surprisingly Swissair didn’t open there counter until 2hrs before scheduled departure, so I managed to have a coffee and I watched the huge line of people trying to check into KLM. Once I checked in I went to security which initially looked like a short line, but turned out to be about half an hour to go through the line. It was kind of weird because during my whole trip to and from it ended up being this first security check at Birmingham’s little airport that I had to wait for more than 5minutes. I then just sat in the departure lounge and watched the sunrise and all the planes take off and land. My flight was scheduled to depart at about 9am, and so at 8 I watched the plane land, unload, and my luggage get loaded on.

It turned out that the plane was a few minutes late departing Zurich because of some snow and de-icing in the morning. Ultimately I boarded at 9am and got into Zurich about an hour before my flight was scheduled to depart. The funny thing about Zurich airport is that they never tell you in advance which terminal or gate your flight is going to leave from so as soon as I got off the plane I checked. There were three big screens and I had heard and seen that several flights were being delayed because of a snow storm working its way into Europe. It took me probably about 10minutes to finally find my flight on the screen (it was way further down than I had thought) but it was still on time. I went to the gate, and on the way went through another security check and then a passport check at the gate before boarding the air Canada flight.

It was kind of cool because I noticed that it looked like the Swiss Junior hockey team was also on the flight with me (and for any of you who don’t know they ended up being huge under dogs in the world junior’s hockey tournament this year, but shocked everyone by knocking off some great teams and winding up 4th!). Once boarded on the flight we were told that there would be about an hour delay because some other flights were delayed due to the weather and Zurich airport has some weird regulations so they had to wait for these flights to come in before we could leave.

I was lucky as I was given a window seat over the wing, so lots of leg room and there was only one person next to me.

Compared to the Thomas Cook/Air Transit flight I took coming to the UK this was definitely way better, as they constantly gave us tones of food and we had the little TVs so we could watch TV, movies, etc. (I think I ended up watching 5 or 6 movies in total during the flight). It was a very smooth flight and we then landed in Toronto only about 30 min late.

I was fortunate to leave on the Saturday as the snow storm hit Europe on the Sunday morning and several of my friends had long delays at the airport and one even had to spend a night in Heathrow.

Actually during the whole Christmas holiday there was a tone of snow that fell in Europe which caused lots of train and plane delays and cancellations, but luckily for me even when I came back it was never an issue. Actually it’s kind of funny to think about it since a week after I got back all the snow had completely melted and it was around 8°C and felt like spring…actually it still feels kind of like spring.

Over the Christmas break I worked a fair bit, but also spent a lot of time with my family. Christmas Eve and day I spent down in Brantford with my dad, sister, brother in law and his family.

Oddly enough there was no snow in Brantford for Christmas (unlike England which had a very white Christmas). But on the 28th on my way home to Collingwood from work I was fortunate enough to drive through a blizzard/snow squall.

It seems that every year I get to drive through at least one snow squall where the visibility is almost zero, but unlike last year I actually enjoyed the drive as it was nice to see the snow again. On the 29th work was closed as the Olympic torch went through Collingwood, Alliston and the Barrie region. So in the morning I went out and saw the torch come through Collingwood. It was the perfect day for it as it was snowing a bit and was about -10°C plus a nice wind chill on top of that; I don’t think the weather could have been anymore Canadian. It was amazing to see the number of people who turned out first thing on a cool Tuesday morning to watch it, and even in many of the store fronts you could see employees at the windows watching it go by.

On January 2nd I then went back down to Brantford and we had a nice Clarke family get together with all of my uncles and most of my cousins and family. It was the second year in a row that we have managed to do it and it was a lot of fun.

On the Sunday I then drove back to Collingwood with my sister. On the way back we stopped off in Toronto and I visited an Optician friend of mine and he showed me his new optical store that he is opening up soon. He managed to get a great space and it sounds like it’s going to do really well, so I can’t wait to see it when it is done. It was great to catch up with him and see what he was up to. Afterwards we continued up to Collingwood. It was snowing a bit in Toronto when we left so I listened to the radio on our way back and it turned out to be a great idea as it was snowing fairly heavily and there were a lot of snow drifts along the roads. Also basically all of the main roads except for Airport road were closed to Collingwood; which is kind of odd as airport road usually closes before the others. We stopped in at a Tim Hortons in Stayner (about 15-30min away from Collingwood) and a police officer mentioned that even airport road would likely get closed down in the next hour or so, so we just made it back in time.

The rest of the time back in Canada the weather wasn’t really an issue, but I kept my eye on the snow in Europe, because my flight was scheduled to land in Birmingham Sunday afternoon, and then first thing Monday morning I had a midterm, so I didn’t want to miss it. Fortunately the trip back went very smoothly, as all my flights were essentially on time and there was never a wait at the security checks.

The only delay at security was for me to explain what my Ophthalmoscope and Retinoscope are (since in the case the battery handles looks kind of suspicious to them). The flight from Toronto to Zurich left basically on time, and so when I got into Zurich I had planned to go downtown and take some pictures for about an hour since I had a 4 hour lay over. I had intended to ask and make sure that I would have enough time, but by the time I had gotten off the flight it was about half an hour later than I expected, and most of the connecting were all showing that they were on time, so unfortunately I decided not to take the train ride to town. But I think next Christmas I might try to book a flight that has a layover in Zurich again but maybe with a bit of a longer layover, so this time I can definitely go and see some of the city. All in all I was actually very impressed with the flights especially since Europe was having a real bad snow storms during the whole Christmas break, especially since the only delays in flights leaving Zurich airport were very minor (an hour or two max)...I guess the Swiss are just much better at dealing with the snow.

... That was my 3week Christmas Holiday
 
Jeff

*Word of the Week: "Grit" which is basically the British term for what they put on the roads and sidewalks when it gets icy. Its basically a mixture of sand, tiny rocks and some salt, and the grit they use here on campus when it's placed on the walks it is an orangy red colour that actually makes it looks like alot of people just had a bit too much alcohol :S