Hooray! It hasn't been a ridiculous amount of time since I last blogged!

Numerous exciting things have happened in life. I went to Cambridge for the weekend to go to Strawberry Fair - basically, a huge one-day hippy-fest, which was quite wonderful. There was lots to see, eat and do, most of it bizarre. The two things which stand out were Capoeira and Singing Bowls.

Capoeira (make sure you watch until 1:00 at least):
I was utterly enchanted by this. I looked it up on wikipedia afterwards, and it's described as an art form rather than a martial art - the music, for instance, is crucial. We literally watched this for ages, perhaps half an hour, and couldn't tear our eyes away. So beautiful.

Singing bowl. They are beautiful. Here's some of the stuff they can do:
I have bought one and am slightly in love with it now. Two of my friends also bought some, and a third is getting one off Ebay, so we may well form a troupe. :D

In other news, yesterday I ate crayfish for the first time. Seeing as it's not the most common term, here is a picture of a crayfish for all you non-native English speakers:
My friend caught them from the river and kept them in a bucket in his kitchen. Then we boiled them and ate them, which was incredibly fiddly, what with ripping off the bottom, then tearing off the shell, carefully removing the genital-urinary tract and trying not to spill guts everywhere. However, they were tasty and it was definitely worth it. Whenever I'm presented with a whole animal carcass to eat, i.e. the meat isn't made to look like it isn't an animal, my immediate reaction is to squeam, but I get into it after that. It felt nice to be a little like a hunter-gatherer rather than a super-sanitised urban wimp.

Today I went to see a play for the first time ever (yes, I admit it, this is one aspect of life in which I'm ridiculously uncultured). To make matters worse, it was in French - La Cantatrice Chauve by Ionesco. However, I understood it fine (I would say I understood at least 90%) and found it hilarious, which was great. I should definitely go the theatre more often now. Also, I am definitely studying Ionesco in fourth year!

I also bought two books today, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and Star-Begotten by H. G. Wells. I look forward to reading them both.

I'd usually be thinking about the end of term by now (it finishes on the 20th), but I'm staying in Oxford until the beginning of July to help with interviews. I am really looking forward to long summer days in Oxford with nothing to do! Feel free to visit, one and all.

I spent the weekend at Cambridge because one of my friends (Mike the Mathematician) lives there. Five Oxonians were there altogether, plus a couple of Mike's friends at some points. I've been to Cambridge a couple of times before and think it is actually quite a lot nicer than Oxford. The grand college, like King's, are prettier than Oxford equivalents like ChristChurch; the towncentre is more spread out and doesn't have people spilling onto the streets; there are loads of parks spread out throughout the town and the shops are better (Fopp! Giant Oxfam! Amnesty Bookshop! Mead vendors! Geeky shop whose name eludes me!).

I had a good time, involving punting (with no falling in! The poles are lighter in Cambridge and therefore easier to manage too. Oh, and the river is cleaner), picnics, nudists, blackberries (first of the season!), bubbles, pubs and Age of Empires until 3:30am.

I bought quite a few things at brilliant Cambridge prices, including LOTR FOTR DVD which I shamefully did not own; these games: Age of Empires 1, Shogun Total War, Theme Hospital; and a book by Noam Chomsky called Hegemony or Survival. Noam Chomsky is one of my person heroes, being a linguist, a socialist, the most quoted living person in the humanities and generally cool. I'd always meant to read one of his political books but never got round to it, so it was this to find this book on American foreign policy for £3.

 I spent two days in Cambridge this week, Wednesday to Friday morning - it was fantastic. Cambridge is really so mcuh nicer than Oxford - there areparks everywhere. I stayed at Mike's (wonderful Oxford mathematician) house, which is awesome and Victorian. Time splitters, age of empires and cake-baking occurred.

Purchases:

Books:
Is it just me or is everything shit? 1 and 2. Cynical and hilarious. Everything is indeed shit. The only problem I found with this is that the authors seem to think that, if they insert the word "fuck" into every single entry, the book will be better. This is also shit. Such is life.
No Logo by Naomi Klein. Some anti-corporate book from Oxfam, should be interesting. It's hard to believe the extent to which corporations control literally everything... somebody should really inform David Icke.

DVDs:
Donnie Darko. 'Nuff said.
The Edukators - German film about a group of communists who break into people's houses and rearrange their furniture. Seen it before, it's really good.

Other:
Mead. Yes, mead. On the basis that honey tastes amazing, this should clearly be my drink of choice from now on. Unfortunately Cambridge seems to be the only place I can get it, and you can't exactly go to a bar and say "glass of mead please".



In other news, I am back to Oxford on Wednesday (at last, thank God!). I will have exams straight away. I do not remember which parts of the course I'll be tested on... I have no idea what to revise. Damn it. Home work is still to be done.

Next term is going to be ludricously busy. Exams at both ends of term, which is only 9 weeks. I already have stuff planned for the first four weekends - that's half the term!  Gah. It also doesn't help that I have a gameboy advance charger now, so I'm back on Pokemon and Super Mario. And of course, the ever present Risk boardgame. And Go. And climbing trees. It will be sunny. Perhaps going to parks. And I'll have my own laptop. Facebook and Livejournal. Oh, and David Cameron is coming in the first week, but I don't think I'll get in - according to facebook, 760 people are definitely going and a further 300 are maybes. The Oxford Union tends to get full at around 250 people. Alas, I did actually want to go listen to the twat say stupid things. Oh well.

How much work will get done? Any bets?