Best Read Outloud

For your rainy day entertainment, may I suggest reading through Lonely Planet's British Language and Culture (or a similar guide to the Queen's English) out loud with the most authentic British accents you can muster?

My sister and I did just that as we took a stroll along the boardwalk last week. Sounding somewhere between very fake tourists, Hermoine Granger and Keeping Up Appearances, we read through "Misunderstandings" and part of the section on slang in my pocket size Lonely Planet. We were giggling to learn the connotations of some common words, stumped by the pronunciations of words we'd never seen before (antenatal? bugerigar?) and outright laughing at eachothers' attrocious attempts to make it sound like we were English born and bred. A fun one (from "Misunderstandings") on how British English doesn't always mean what we think it does:

tip to dump; a rubbish dump and by extension any untidy place. [...] In some country areas there are signs that read 'No Tipping', meaning 'don't dispose of rubbish here'.

On the things I packed for college

If you saw my dorm room freshman year, you know I overpacked--hands down--for college. Add to that the fact that I didn't actually "move out" until I graduated just over a week ago and you end up with the huge pile of stuff--mostly useful--that I've been unpacking over the last few days. Highlights (as promised ^_^) include:

• unwearable jeans in various forms: four pairs in various states of being used for craft materials, three juggling balls, a set of two front pockets (why did I keep those?), a pair of curtains for my vanity table
• seven Halloween costumes (in my defense, I only had three at school at any given time)
• at least as many pairs of long underwear as there are days in the week
  
• a hair curler (used maybe four times in four years)
• dowel rods
  

The classic item (a car charger for my cell phone), alas, is no longer as ridiculous as it once was. But, nonetheless, lots of random stuff!

Part of this (Scientific) World

I was browsing the last few entries from Cosmic Variance, a scientific blog that I follow occasionally (primarily when I'm told to read it), and came upon this: arXiv Find: Atom interferometry tests of local Lorentz invariance. While the authors of this arXive release (in particular, the fourth author, Steve Chu) are the subject of greatest interest to CV's bloggers, my reaction was slightly different. I've met at least four of the five authors (I'm not sure if I've met Sven) and seeing their names on a brief blog browse tickled my little-mermaid-like desire to be "part of this (scientific) world."

Do Re Mi Fa So

If there's anything that I've become while an undergraduate, it's musically spoiled.

I had a good (although rather one-sided... totally my fault) conversation on this topic while I was grabbing a yogurt and some juice on Thursday before one of my exams. We decided--and this is not the first time I've articulated this--that Eastman has, in some sense, ruined our ability to listen to music. We've been feasting on the rich sounds of budding professional musicians for four years. Now what used to be "charmingly out of tune" is jarring and accidentally displaced rhythms take away from my enjoyment of listening to amateur music.

In honor of the last weeks of time with Eastman so close at hand, I've been taking in lots of concerts. There's a smattering from Eastman, from campus ensembles, and from other venues. Here's the past few week's collection:

• April 24: Wait, I'm Singing! Cantatas and lute music from 17th century Italy
  Ellen Hargis, soprano and Paul O'Dette, theorbo
• April 25: Eve 6
• April 27: Gamelan Lila Muni (traditional music performed by Eastman's Balinese gamelan angklung orchestra)
• April 28: Holst's The Planets and Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 (b-flat)
  UR Symphony Orchestra
  
• April 29:Brass Choir and Percussion Ensemble
• May 2: Beijing Violas
• May 3: Concerti Grossi of the Baroque
  Yale School of Music, early music performance class
  

If the weather holds out, Break of Reality's playing tomorrow evening near campus. Concert-going was on hiatus with my tests, so I'm looking forward to attending a few more before graduation!

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EDIT (May 9): HooRaY Break of Reality! We weathered today's inclement weather to see BoR at the Lilac Festival. 'Twas awesome to see them again, even if it was short!