Edinburgh

Sorry that I haven't posted in a while. Here is a really quick take on my trip to Edinburgh:

So I met my friends John and Grant at the bus station in St. Andrews. From there we bussed it straight to Edinburgh, which is an amazingly beautiful city set in a valley. This makes the approach really cool because the bridge that leads in to Edinburgh proper looks down on the whole city. Its a cool effect and really gives you a snapshot of the whole city. The first thing we did once we arrived was to find a restaurant as we were all very hungry. After walking around the city for around 30 minutes, we finally decided on a small bar tucked into an alley. At this point we would have picked anything we were so hungry. But it turned out that the bar had one of the best menus in town. I ordered a lamb burger with a mint-creme sauce--my friends were less adventurous and had normal burgers.

After the bar, we made our way around the city, eventually ending up at the National Gallery of Scotland, a huge museum of art that is entirely free to the public. We wandered around the many masterpieces for about 2 hours before realizing that we should probably see the town before it got too dark. We next headed to the Edinburgh Castle, which cost $13 to get into, but was totally worth it. The castle is set up on the top of rocky hill and was built to withstand the most violent sieges. I have a couple pictures of the many cannons and fortifications that decked the walls, which I will post later on. The Scottish Crown Jewels are stored in the castle, and are really just as unimpressive as the English Crown Jewels, if my memory is accurate. Maybe it was because the room was dark, but they didn't seem especially opulent or rare and splintered and cracked in places. I mean I know they are 500 or so years old, but they are the Crown Jewels! You would think they could be preserved for posterity.

After the castle, we did what the only absolute must on my agenda from the very beginning had been: go the the Scotch Whiskey Tasting Experience, a museum/tasting room that lets you sample and teaches you how to appreciate good Scottish whiskey. As soon as you pay, you are taken on a barrel-ride (in a real Whiskey barrel on rail-tracks) through the history of Scottish whiskey. After, you receive a sampling of the various whiskeys from the four whiskey-making regions of Scotland: the highlands, the lowlands, Speyside, and Islay.
From there, the tour takes you into a vault packed with the biggest collection of Scotch whiskey in the world--over 3200 bottles or something ridiculous. The tour sends you on your way with a special Scotch tasting glass to appreciate Scotch in the proper way.

Following the tour, I purchased a bottle of Glenlivet whiskey from the Speyside region.

That is all I have time to write now. I will write more if I think of anything else.

Staten

Inter-Hall Soccer and Dodgeball

The title says it all. Andrew Melville, my hall, competes in a number of sporting events throughout the year which test the mettle and intestinal fortitude of all St. Andrewans. Two of these are soccer and dodgeball. I joined the hall soccer team at the last minute right as they were leaving for there match on Monday and had a great time playing for the team. We supposedly signed up for the "poor league", which was supposed to be the league comprised of the worst teams. But we got jipped, and by some sort of cruel trick, were placed in the "premier league", comprised of the best teams. For instance, the team we played on Monday came to play in matching uniforms, modeled after FC Barcelona, had their names on their jerseys, had a coach, and were the best players from the nearby town of Cupar, population 1000. We don't have a coach, nor do we even have practices, and our uniform, as our captain told me, is a "blue shirt of some kind". Needless to say, we were slaughtered. The other team had possession most of the time, but we managed to restrict them to only 4 goals. We scored one and it was scored by none other than yours truly. It was scored in the last two minutes on the counterattack by some miracle. Afterwards, we all went to the pub to celebrate with a pint and it was great to kind of see the recreational culture of the British.

Then on Tuesday it was time for dodgeball. Again, our hall came relatively unprepared to the meet (because our captain forgot to attend the campus-wide meeting) and so came dressed in ridiculous outfits while everybody else had uniforms with the names of their halls on them. One of our guys came dressed in nothing but his boxers and a low-cut shirt which didn't cover his midriff. We came in pretty confident and our confidence was justified because we absolutely smoked the other halls. We had an 'A' and 'B' squad. I was originally put on the 'B' team and bumped up after I put in a pretty good performance in a couple matches. In our final match, we went up against the biggest hall on campus, New Hall. New Hall's team was made up of six huge rugby-player-looking dudes, who looked pretty confident that they could put away our team of scrawny, scrappy and scandalously dressed players. Our strategy was to use our speed to our advantage, grab the balls in the middle first and then pummel the meatheads. And it worked. We won by a convincing margin, only losing one player in the carnage--me!

All around, hall activities are a really great study break. I wish we did them more at Whitman.

Signing out from the home of awesome agents of procrastination,

Staten

Alfred Dunhill Links Championship

So the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship at St. Andrews teed off yesterday. I'd never heard of the tournament, but supposedly it is a relatively big-time Pro-Amateur tournament that is televised, and everything. Anyway, today at around 9 in the morning I went down to check it out and the pictures below are of my adventure. Unfortunately I couldn't take too many pictures because, strictly speaking, spectators aren't allowed to bring cameras to the course (as I learned in the attached video...).

It was a great time. I got to see a couple big time golfing stars up close like Ernie Els, Rory McIlroy, Colin Montgomerie, Martin Kaymer, Retief Goosen, even John Daly.

Pictures are worth a 1000 words:

The TV coverage makes it look warmer than it is.

Stands for Sunday's final.

Rory McIlroy teeing off.

Colin Montgomerie putting from afar.

The St. Andrews Clubhouse right before the first tee.

Montgomerie.

Colin again.

You guessed it.

Martin Kaymer.

Don't cross St. Andrews security!

Nothing Going

I will post more soon. School at St. Andrews is gearing up!

Fire Alarm

After a very weird Friday, in which one of my good friends ended up going to the hospital after taking a pretty bad fall down a full flight of stairs, my Saturday was comparably very relaxed. I ended up doing homework for most of the day and then hanging out with friends later on, but we didn't end up going out. I went to sleep around 1:30 am, hoping to catch up on sleep.

But at 2:00, all hell broke loose! The fire alarm inside the hall started blaring and people outside my room were scrambling out of their rooms. I frantically dressed myself, put on some shoes and joined an equally drowsy stream of people down the stairs and out into the chill of the Scotland night. I should also point out that, in the hurry, I couldn't find the key for my door and so left my room unlocked. I checked, and rechecked, my pants pockets, where I was sure I left my keys, but to no avail. As I walking out, I realized that my pants were on backwards and that the pockets I had been checking were actually my two butt-pockets and not my normal ones. I got a few laughs from a couple people, but most were probably too tired to care.

That's pretty much the end of that story. Today I think I'll do some more homework and then head off to play some squash--hopefully against that Canadian.

Signing out from the home of bitterly cold nights,

Staten

Recent Exploits

I finished my first week of classes today and, man, it feels good. After a little rescheduling, I think I have a pretty good assortment of classes. My Capital Investment Analysis course is going to be tough. Our professor seems to fly through the material at a fairly rapid clip and says that he expects us to have read his lecture notes before we come to class. I'm not used to being this prepared, so its going to take some adjusting on my part. I overheard a conversation going on behind me about this particular class and one of the participants said something about a graduate student in finance not doing too well in the course even though he had obviously covered a lot of the material before. If that's the case, it is definitely going to be a slog, but it is my interest, so hopefully I'll enjoy most of it.

Another thing I'm having to adjust to is the size of my classes. My english course in Literary Theory is only about 19 kids, but my Economics courses are both around 40 people and are lecture-style courses in amphitheater-style classes. I don't think we have amphitheater classes at Whitman, simply because we never have more than 30 in a classroom at once. The anonymity is nice, at least during the first couple classes, but it is definitely going to make it more intimidating to ask questions.

Funwise, I have been playing a lot of squash and hanging around with my fellow Melvillites. I've been attending the squash team practices and playing with some really good players. There is this one guy, from somewhere in Canada, a big guy who looks sort of middle eastern, and he is just amazingly annoying. He reminds me a lot of this one guy who I used to play tennis with back in South Africa who once cried when he lost a match to me. I asked this Canadian whether he was going to try out for the team, and for which team, first or second, he would go for, and this guy turns to me and says: "I think I'll go out for seconds. I mean, I was clearly better than everyone in that group we were just in (a group that I was a part of) and I know a couple of those guys are trying out for seconds, so I'll probably have a good shot." I didn't know what to say. I REALLY want to beat him now.

Tonight I think we are all going to go out to the pubs for some drinks. The nightlife in St. Andrews is very good. There are a bunch of pubs, ranging from the chill, more relaxed establishments to the raucous, music-filled club/bars, so something for everyone's tastes. We'll see what we choose tonight. Hopefully nothing too crazy, but you never know.

Signing out from the home of Scotch,

Staten