Viva Voce!

Currently Listening To:
Jose Gonzalez
Veneer

Viva Voce- this is the new latin phrase that I have learned this week. Living in Cambridge, home of Darwin, Newton, Watson and Crick (just to name a few), you tend to pick up latin just by walking down the street! I picked up this phrase from Jason, who just completed his Viva Voce.
Viva: A. adv. By word of mouth; in speech; orally. (Freq. in parenthetic use.) a. As distinct from writing. Also in or with viva voce.

Basically, the phrase is used here for when a student defends his work, orally. For Jason, this was defending his PhD thesis in front of two people selected by his supervisor. Jason completed his viva this week and now has completed his PhD. He's not Dr. Olfert until his graduation day in July, but yeah for him! Three years of work completed!!! (Side note: While living in Cambridge, we have managed to see Stephen Hawkins (at a Korean bbq night-weird!) and I have had a Nobel Prize winner as a patient. Those are probably the smartest famous people we have come across during our time here. Just thought you'd like to know).

On to other celebrity spottings (I should write in People/US magazine!) Recent Christian celebrity spotting: Now there has been rumoured at Eden Baptist (our church here), that a certain Christian author was in the midst, visiting during his sabbatical. And sure enough, this last Sunday, we happened to sit behind John Piper, author of "Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist", among other books. One of our friends really likes Piper's writings and get his pod cast everyday! So, we said hello and introduced ourselves. He seemed really nice (of course). It was one of those conversations that end quite shortly after you say hello and how much you enjoy his writing and ask how long will you be in Cambridge. Maybe we will be blessed with a sermon from him. I'll let you know.

Other going-ons this week: The Thirty-Third Cambridge Beer Festival.
I think Jason went to the festival everyday. Mostly because he was celebrating his completion of his PhD but also 'cause it's a cool place to hang out. I managed to pop in for one pint on my day off. It's hosted by a group whose campaign is to support small breweries and so it's mostly local ales and beers.


This is a picture of my very annoying, waste of money, scooter. Which, in theory, was a great idea, but in reality has been nothing but a flop. I believe it was the day after I got my learner's licence and I was riding it back from church (in the rain none the less) that we had our first of many breakdowns. Since the beginning, it's been unreliable and very, very aggravating. But, currently, it's decided to work due to the nice-er weather. I say nice-er because in all truth, the weather's still crap in England. The only problem now is that you have to make sure that you don't get caught in a rain shower because then the motor cuts out (Jason could explain the reason why this is). Which, in England, is really hard to predict whether it's going to rain or not and it tends to rain alot. I have had too many incidents to write about, but the latest is when I had a bright idea to take the scooter to the grocery store while the sun was shining.... Cut to me coming out of the grocery store and it's hailing out!! So, I tried to ride the scooter home, which continued to stall (once when I was going into a traffic circle/roundabout). Not the best place to become stranded. Our next challenge with the scooter is to sell it... on a nice, sunny day!!

Smiling When You Don't Mean To...

I was reading a friend's blog about how she found something terrifying but at the same time funny and wanted a word to describe it. She ended up creating a word (humourfying). It made me think of a character flaw I seem to have. The flaw is that often when dealing with a situation that is horrible for another person, I tend to smile as I talk about it. Let me give you some examples (as you begin to think that I'm a completely terrible person). At work yesterday morning, I was give a verbal report to the nursing staff starting their shift for the day (remember: I had been up ALL night working), and as I was telling them some pretty horrible things (a patient not having a penis due to genital warts gone mad/bad, a patient who was dying), I kept getting this stupid grin on my face! It's not that I was happy about the things that I was talking about it, it was that I was just reacting to situations so tragic that I was having trouble reacting to them in any other way. It's like mentally, I know there horrible situations but emotionally, I was unable to truly react to them. It made me think of a time in high school when Jason told me about a friend's parents dying in a car crash, with a grin on his face (I should have ran then). Now, I knew he was upset about the news and I knew that he didn't think it was funny but it just appeared that the situation was so shocking and incredulous, he was having trouble reacting to it. So, are we two, callous, hard-hearted people, perfect for each other, to laugh at people's misfortunes as we go through life? Or are we completely normal is the sense that we often have a hard time emotionally taking in difficult news/situations that require a deeper part of our selves to react? And is there a word to describe something that is so horrible, it's peculiar/funny in a tragic sense? Insensitive? Maybe.

Another thing that happened during my night shifts, is that I discovered Google Earth™. Basically, it's the whole world, in satellite picture. It's really cool. I was looking at it with my co-workers who were from all parts of the globe. One nurse was from thePhilippiness, the other from Zimbabwe, a doctor from Australia and me! We were flying all over the world, looking at each other's cities and tops of homes. Edmonton's satellite pictures, currently, show some parts of the city still covered in snow and other parts green and lush. Could this be the current situation in Edmonton? Quite likely. More likely, however, is that it is covered in blue and orange due to all the fans of the Edmonton Oilers out on the streets celebrating (rioting) the Oilers' win to advance to the Western Conference final (yaah!!). Jason and I had a laugh at this quote from an Oilers fan in the Globe and Mail.
“We cheered for their anthem and we got it done,” said Oiler fan Morten Feddersen. “We might be a bunch of rednecks, but we have class. That's the whole difference right there and we won for it.”

The quote is in reference to the San Jose Sharks booing the Canadian national anthem at one of the hockey games in San Jose. For anyone not from Alberta, that quote is pretty much what a typical Albertan sounds like.

I probably should have made this blog site my own as I think Jason will probably not be contributing to any of the blog entries (although he does deserve mention as a huge creative influence).

Trip to Ireland

Here's my first blog on our new blog site. Our other site will soon be non-existent and I was finding it difficult to post blogs (or at least that's my excuse). So, here's to a fresh start and (hopefully) much more blogs!

We just back from Ireland yesterday. We went there for our anniversary. We had a great time. We spent most of the time driving along the coastline. We thought that the country was really, really beautiful and the people we met were really friendly.



We flew into Shannon and stayed there for the night. We drove around the "Ring of Clare", seeing the Cliffs of Moher, the Poulnabrone Tomb (and ancient burial site) and the Ailwee Cave.




Here's me posing for the brochure.

Then we drove down to Dingle Peninsula where we stayed the night in a great B&B facing the ocean. The next day we drove around the peninsula on cool, winding roads. There was gorgeous beaches and old ruins everywhere.






This crumbling castle was in a sheep farmer's field, who we got permission from, to walk across his land to the castle. It was really cool.




So six years of marriage! We like to celebrate our anniversary by going on a trip every year and we try to take turns planning the trip. We also try to make the destination a surprise for the other person. It was my turn to plan this year's trip and surprise! I did actually manage to get Jason to the airport without him knowing where we were actually going. I thought that telling him he should definitely bring an umbrella would raise suspicions...
Here's a list of our previous anniversary trips (in order):
Jasper (Pyramid Lake)
Peru (on a hike to Manchu Pichu, celebrating with 12 other people)
Jasper (see a pattern?)
Bath (and the Cotswalds- oh so British!)
Berlin (with my sister. It wasn't technically a anniversary trip but it was our anniversary and we were traveling...)