23/10/2009
Greetings!
I recover from a cough as I write this. The reason for the long silence is the fever I had last weekend. I know you kind-hearted people are starting to worry already! But let me reassure you that I am well now.
The other thing keeping me busy is the set of lectures called the Gifford lectures. Professor Michael Gazzaniga, a pretty famous neuroscientist from University of California, Santa Barbara, came to Edinburgh to give a series of talks on ourselves, Humans. Of course you will have to visit the website to know exactly the topic of every lecture and the great many issues they all dealt with in such a well organised manner. The presentations were very engaging. Every lecture had videos of examples of cases he talked about. I thoroughly enjoyed attending them all. Such intellectual activities are available here! You can watch them online- they were recorded live. Apparently the Gifford lectures are a tradition in Edinburgh. There is even a post-Gifford drinks and discussion at the Chaplaincy. There were many more elderly people there but it was far more involving than I expected. We made some friends!
We also had one day this week on Effective Presentations. It was a day-long activity and pretty fruitful. I went for a Diwali dinner and function also this week. I say dinner first because the food was free and good! Those kinds of things start to matter more when you live alone. The program was good too; songs and dances. There is a self-proclaimed pandit here. If I had less to do in life, I’d probably go trouble him about where he got his title from.
Meanwhile, I also underwent a severe Tamil-missing session. Though I don’t speak it too fluently myself, relatively, I miss hearing it all around me at home. I spent a morning listening to old Tamil songs from Salangai Oli; probably a bad choice for feeling better considering the story’s tragic nature.
I didn’t mention the fireworks on Calton Hill during Dussera did I? And the Indian programs there. Indian here must mean Punjabi or something. I hardly hear Tamil and when I do, it sounds unlike the dialect I listen to at home. After dinner and the programs back then, they played deafening Bhangra music. It was fun dancing to it and I don’t believe that Tamil music is more suitable to dance to. I just miss it.
Well. That’s it from me for now. I hope you are all well and that I hear from you soon.