Birthday's and Crags and Nerdy-ness, Oh My!

Hello all,
I was informed by a certain family member that I need to be posting more on this blog, especially considering that a lot of stuff has happened in the intervening days since the last post, so I will bow to his/her wishes (note the ambiguity of gender meant to confound my readers).

First of all, I made it through my birthday, I am 23 now so to any family member that this makes feel old I apologize, though I am excited to edge ever closer to the elusive car rental age. My birthday started out a little lamely as I woke up at 7:30 or so, in an attempt to procure a bike. It seems that in Edinburgh the only way to get a used bike at all is to wait outside this place called the Bike Station (actually a pretty cool place: http://www.bikestation.org.uk) on Saturday morning. The Bike Station opens at 10:30 and has ~30 bikes each week for people to potentially buy. Now, just to give an example I got there at a bit before 8 and I was 16th in line. The person who was first got there at around 6:30. By 10:30 there are usually 80 people in line for the first 3-4 weeks of the school year and then it comes down to smaller numbers as the weather worsens and more people have bikes. So, if anyone is looking to start a business a used bike shop in Edinburgh with a steady supply from somewhere would be a good bet. Luckily, being where I was in line afforded me the opportunity to purchase a bike at a mostly reasonable price, and though it wasn't exactly what I wanted, it is good enough to get me to and from school which was the main objective.

So having spent the first 4 hours or so of my birthday embroiled in bike acquisition, I came home to find a few flatmates eager to hang out. So we talked a bit and decided the best bet for the day was to check out Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crags (both of which are located in Holyrood park, which is ~30 minutes from my house and 15 minutes from the city center). This actually amounted to a pretty fun couple of hours. The end of the day was a fun little get together surrounding a cake made by one of my flatmates, who hasn't cooked much, but made a truly valiant effort, and really made my day feel a lot more like a birthday. Overall, a very fun day.

Onto the titular nerdy-ness described. This actually encapsulates 2 separate events both of which I found pretty exciting. First, I was hanging out with one of my North American Friends, (did I mention that >50% of my friends here are from NA. The few Scottish folks I have met outside of class will come into the story later.) a girl from Connecticut who is doing what must be one of the hardest masters programs at the school. Anyhow, we were talking about nerdy things that we do and I made a claim that I have made many times before, that I am probably the nerdiest person that you will ever meet. Turns out this girl has me beat, admittedly not on every level, but she speaks freaking elvish! We traded stuff back and forth and though I might have her on a few esoteric bits (tech theater, sheer volume of nerdy games played and depth of rules reading) she definitely comes out ahead with respect to nerdy-ness overall.

Secondly, and as promised, I met some Scottish folks, but you may be asking yourself, how outside of class would Jake manage to meet people actually from Scotland in Edinburgh (a surprisingly tough thing to do). Turns out, that Scottish people play magic, and so do I. That's right my obsession with small rectangles of cardboard is finally paying off. I went to a prerelease tournament (what that means is unimportant, just know that I was excited enough about it to research on the internet where to go) and started talking to a few guys about magic. They in turn invited me out to a pub to play more magic after and 5 hours later, a little drunkenly, I had a new set of magic playing friends. Small sidenote, Magic + Drinking = fun times. I have actually since hung out with these guys and gotten onto an email list of events, so hurray for friends outside of staving off culture shock and being in 3 classes together.

With respect to other news, I have finally had all my classes, 2 of the 3 seem really interesting and the 3rd could get there, but felt a little bit like stuff I had done before. I also have decided to audit a class on Algorithmic game theory and its applications just in case that paper I worked on last summer needs to get expanded for a journal, hurray for potentially getting published, though admittedly in a field which is not my main academic one. Meh.

Alright well there is another week of my life encapsulated pithily into blog form. Hope it was enjoyable, and if not (or even if so, but you want more info) tell me what you want to know about in the comments.