Bits of last week

1. Friday: Catching the last of the warmer weather we've had this week, Alex and I cycled down to the Newnham Riverbank Club, walked down the little path (which I think of as the paratext to the almost secret-garden-esque tranquility and remove of the club) and then gingerly slid into the water. Alex is so good at keeping me calm because I always begin breathing sharp and fast and she reminds me 'slow breaths, just a little more in, that's it.' It was the coldest water we've swum in so far, so cold it wasn't truly enjoyable because it hurt, but the feeling of triumph at having done it, and the warmth of the sun on our skin after (a 11 degree sun can feel as warm as Singapore when you've just emerged from cold water!) was absolutely worth it. We took a celebratory picture by hanging my camera on a tree and using the timer - here is the first one we took, and then laughed over because I look a) naked and b) like a creature composed of just legs and head!

So we took another - happiness and madness.

2. Wednesday: Jacob made this plum and almond cake which was so delicious - just the right level of sweet and tart and dense and light... I am definitely putting it on my to make list! We had it for dessert after making an adapted version of this creamy beet and kale pasta, which involved adding basil to the cashew cream sauce and using toasted walnuts, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds in place of the pine nuts, and it was so good. This was in celebration of him finishing and submitting his portfolio essays - I'm so proud of him!

3. Random: These earrings from Searlait are designed so beautifully - I also like these and these. And they're very conscious about making their packaging eco-friendly/recyclable, and make their jewelry from eco-silver (scrap silver that has been melted down and re-cycled) Sadly, like so many beautiful and ethical things it's wildly out of my student budget, but perhaps in the future...

4. Friday: I watched BOOM (written by Jean Tay), the first Southeast Asian play to be staged in Cambridge. It was absolutely beautifully presented, the set had elements brought from Singapore itself (like the Good Morning towel), the sound used recordings of birds taken from Macritchie and the 'flashback' sequences were filmed in Singapore over Christmas so familiar scenes of an HDB or a raintree were projected onto the Corpus playroom wall.

5. Monday: I met Pierre for coffee (or an absolutely delicious chai tea for me) to catch up on each others' terms, our thoughts on the f u t u r e and to talk about the randomest things from the band Iron and Wine, pre-war Hollywood propaganda films to the play he watched in London called Brief Encounter which I now very much want to see (twenty pound tickets please happen). Cambridge is a strange place of 'once a term' meetings with friends some times, but it is comforting to know that those friendships are still sustainable. I made sure I didn't look at the time for the whole meeting, so we could simply talk until we had said all we wanted to, and then say goodbye without the feeling of unfinished conversation, which felt really liberating.

6. Wednesday: I got an email from Cambridge about the scholarship I interviewed for a week before, an interview I thought went very badly. But God's sense of humour (and perhaps in some measure my own lack of self confidence) meant that I thought wrong, and I received an acceptance. This put me in a big conundrum, since I'd given up Cambridge to God, again and again, since Wednesday, thinking that he must have meant me not to go there. Perhaps it was a lesson in pre-empting God, perhaps it was a way of showing me how attached I've grown to this place, perhaps it was a was a means of opening my eyes to how terrified I am of what London means - bright lights, big city, roaring tube - but more on that in future.

7. Tuesday: In my singing lesson, Nic could tell that my voice was rather shredded after the weekends final evensong and Sussex Pistols concert (with the incredible Cadenza and Alternotives) and so after doing some warm ups and then attempting (very poorly on my part) to sing some bars of Purcell's 'I attempt from love's sickness to fly', he suggested I take a break and rest my voice, and instead of singing we talked about fell running and ice climbing and yoga. (I have only done the last of those three things, but after hearing about the other two from Nic I'd love to try them some day)

8. Thursday: I had my final dissertation meeting with James Wade, who has been really encouraging and patient with me throughout the entire writing process (not entirely done yet!) At one point in the supervision we were talking about a word (I think it might have been tears, which wouldn't be surprising, since that is the main thing I examine in my dissertation) and thought it would be a good idea to look it up in the MED (then again when is it not a good idea to look something up in the MED?) and I typed it into my laptop while he bent over his computer and in my head I thought 'How funny - here's an academic who I barely know and who is different from me in so many ways, and yet here we are, both nerding out over etymology.' Perhaps why I like medieval literature so much is because it deals so richly in words: where they come from, how they change and how they sound (just reading them slightly differently from how we'd read them today makes me more sensitive to what they might draw on and mean)